


There's Still No Guarantee

by coldhope



Series: In Full Clarity [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/F, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, University, and some RST, humanstuck AU, loads of UST, sex in general, yep that would be sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-12
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-05 05:05:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldhope/pseuds/coldhope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spring semester at Anningley offers new and exciting challenges including Lightboard M, deep and meaningful interpersonal conversations, skulls, yet more theater parties, and Dave Strider's storied cool being shaken to its foundations.</p>
<p><b><span class="u">THIS FIC HAS BEEN DISCONTINUED.</span></b> My apologies to anyone who has been patiently waiting for an update, but this one is not going to be continued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Spring that year came in a fury of daffodils, a brilliant nodding scrambled mess of yellow bouncing in all the verges and all the undergrowth of Anningley’s woods. You’d started classes again while the weather was still fucking horrible and you bundled yourself up in all your warmest things like a fucking cocoon and even so you couldn’t ever get warm until you found yourself alone again with him, wrapped up in him like a web of annoying angles and violet and that wonderful sharp-rose smell that you think has to be him as much as it is that orange-bottle crap he puts in his hair. You were always warm when he held you. 

By the time February gave way to March you’d got him okay enough with the Mercedes that he felt comfortable driving the two of you out to your glade. The glade. The theater people’s glade, but fuck it, he’d taken you here on your first real soi-disant date and now it was yours, suck it theater people. Dead grass and leaves had crackled under your feet and the chill had bitten into your thin bones but when you’d made your way down the narrow trail to the gorge itself you were wordless at how simply lovely it was: that bright cheerful stupid wonderful _yellow_ of the flowers was drifted like snow on every flat surface that could sustain a root, wide exuberant trumpets turned up to the sun’s touch, nodding and dancing as a skirl of breeze flickered through their ranks. 

Eridan had picked you one, a jonquil rather than a daffodil, something so fragile and precious it was almost a pity to cut it from its stem--but, as he pointed out, it would be battered to transparency anyway by the night’s forecast rain and it was better to appreciate something while it was there to be appreciated and it was such a lovely, lovely little thing and you had held it carefully between your fingertips, wondering if the arrangement of petals had anything to do with Fibonacci, and then he’d caught your chin in his fingers and he was kissing you. 

Some pleasant time later you’d tucked the flower behind your ear and you had fished the little box out of your pocket, a box you’d been carrying around for weeks now waiting for just the right moment. This hadn’t seemed totally perfect, but you were also enough of a pragmatist to realize that if you were going to wait for total perfection you would likely carry the fucking thing to your grave, and so you just swallow hard and you go for it. 

The box contains something you’ve saved up for for a while. You’d used your Christmas and Hanukkah money from your dads and all their friends-and-relations, plus a bit you’d been putting aside for a memory upgrade. Kanaya had driven you all the way to the remotely civilized town half an hour away which had an actual mall, and you had spent an hour and a half pickily browsing through the jewelry store’s selection before you’d finally bought something. It’s not very valuable. Half the shit he already has on his fingers would buy it several times over. 

You awkwardly hand over the box. “Way late birthday present. Sorry, I’d meant to, like, give this to you sooner, it just, it...”

Eridan blinks down at the velvet box in his palm and you hope, oh you hope to fuck, that he doesn’t hate it. He opens the lid and behind his glasses his eyes go _wide_ , pupils shrinking and then dilating again in a weird little flicker, and he makes a weird noise in the back of his throat.

“I, uh. I have the receipt still, if you’d, uh, if you want something else instead,” you stammer.

He ignores you and he reaches into the box’s white velvet cushioned interior and lifts out what you’d after long deliberation bought for him. It is nothing like the vast ostentatious gems he wears as a matter of course. It is...just two jagged wavy lines of gold that hold between them two round brilliant-cut stones, one an amethyst, one a citrine. 

It’s an Aquarius ring, according to the lady at the jewelry store. And you know he’s sort of always been _into_ his sign. And this had had your favorite color and his favorite color and and and...

Fuck, Eridan, _say something_.

He doesn’t say something. He just wriggles at his left hand, and you don’t get what he’s doing until he’s wrenched off the ruby that lives there, and he slides your ring, _your ring_ , into its place. Thank God, you think, you’d figured out the size right. 

Eridan stares down at his hand, turning it this way and that, watching light catch and slide in the gems, run across the jagged gold. 

“... _Say something,_ ” you ask him. “Please.”

He doesn’t: but he does wrap you up so tight in his arms that your ribs creak and you think he’s lifted you off the fucking ground and he pushes his face against your neck and suddenly you can breathe again, suddenly everything really is going to be all right. 

“...l-love you, Sol,” he manages, and you can tell he’s close to crying, and you wrap tight around him. 

“Hey--Eridan, hey, it’s okay--”

“I know it is, dumbass,” he says, and sniffles, and hugs you tighter. “Jesus fuck, do you even _know_ how perfect this is, it’s, I’d, I’d sort of wanted to ask you for something like this, I just never ever came up with a good way to say it and, oh, _Sol_.”

You stroke his gelled hair, carefully, and then his back, in slow little warm circles. He gets so damn _overwrought_ and you can generally chill him out with backrubs and instructions to breathe. Now, though, you just kiss his shoulder and you tug him down to sit with you on the new grass, jade-green and translucent and bursting with life.

He settles in your lap, leaning against you, wriggling against you, and that he’s so obviously wanting your touch makes you fucking melt. You wrap him up in your bony uncomfortable embrace and you hold him tight and you talk to him, you say all the things you’ve said before but that you think perhaps right now he needs to hear again: how he is the best thing that has ever happened to you, how much you love him, how much he means and is to you; how you go through every fucking day thinking of him, how you can’t wait to get back to your room at night and do stupid shit like argue with him about TV or games, how you relish every stupid fucking chance to go make him his horrible tea stuff and how much you fucking adore it when he makes you your coffee in the mornings. How...

There’s a lot of it, really. You go on for a while. You are so fucking retarded for Eridan Ampora there should be a whole new goddamn entry in the DSM-Whatever for this particular case. 

He listens to you talk and makes a sort of soft purring noise and after a while he wriggles down to lie with his head in your lap and his arms wrapped around your waist, and that’s lovely and you sort of maybe wish you had a blanket or something else to lie on that was more conducive to bad behavior than slightly damp new grass because wow. 

“...love you, Sol,” he’s saying. “Do you even know what you’ve fuckin done for me? Every goddamn day I go out there and deal with the assholes bein assholes and they just....they don’t matter, Sol, cause they just keep on bein assholes and I get to come home to you, no fuckin contest who wins in that situation. You’re like....okay, this is fuckin stupid.”

“No it isn’t,” you say, stroking his hair. “Tell me.”

“It is fuckin stupid but. Well. Like. When I was little, right, I read all these books, adventure bullshit, you know, little boys’ fuckin daydreams a bein heroes and shit. All a them had _friends_ in them. Real friends, not just kids your dad brought over to play with you for an hour each week cause you were supposed to mingle with your own fuckin class or whatever. Friends who cared. I never had that until Fef, and even then it wasn’t...the thing and the whole a the thing. I never had anyone who honest to fuck gave a shit about me until you came along.”

“Eridan--”

“Shh, I gotta finish.” He’s playing with your ring. It looks....actually pretty okay with the others he has on, even if it’s smaller and less ostentatious: the stones are good quality, they sparkle like anything. You remember tilting it in your hands in the white-velvet-and-glass store, flushing brilliantly with awkwardness, and it looks so right on his finger: you did good. You think that to yourself, deliberately: you did good. 

“I spent so much a my life bein as flagrant and unbearable an asshole as I could possibly be for reasons and it took me a while to get past that shit with you, and...you put up with me, Sol. You had patience. I know it ain’t like the easiest shit in the world for you to be patient.”

You laugh despite yourself, curled over him, cradling his head against you. 

“An’...I always wanted to, like, have something from you. I gave you that ring on the ITW openin night cause I wanted to and it...it seemed auspicious, you know? I knew you liked it. But I didn’t know how to, like, ask for somethin in return.”

“I know,” you tell him, stroking his hair. Now that the production is over the brown dye is fading slowly from his purple lock but you know from listening to him bitch out loud over and over and over and over that he’s just going to have to bleach the fuck out of it again and start over, woe is him. You give it special attention, letting the wine-colored strands slip through your fingers. “I know and I wish I could’ve given this to you before, but....uh...I suck at, like, preparing scenes and shit like that. I’ve been carrying it around for a little while now.”

Eridan opens his purple eyes and looks up at you. “You are such a dumbass, Sol,” he says.

“I know,” you agree blissfully, and he takes your hand in his and kisses your fingertips. 

~

On the way back to campus he doesn’t fucking stall once. He’s so _anxious_ most of the time--you can tell driving makes his stomach hurt, you wish you could do something about that--but this afternoon he seems to be pretty chill, not glancing down at the shift knob at all, managing his starts without juddering or racing the engine. You think it’s because he’s thinking hard enough about something else to let his less-anxious hindbrain get on with the business of driving: you remember from your own awful learning days how much better you were when you weren’t thinking about what you were doing. You’d actually used that, capitalized on it, and often made yourself focus on something outside the car when you were doing hillstarts; watching traffic or checking out the state of the opposing light made you magically way less likely to fuck shit up. 

Nobody has keyed the Mercedes. You’ve named it Horatio. 

The skull he’d borrowed from Jake English is, of course, Yorick. Strider apparently has some kind of unreasonable animus against poor old Yorick and refuses to let him back into the Strider-English household, so Yorick has taken up residence on Eridan’s desk and seems to be enjoying his new digs. He’s pretty cheery for a skull, you guess. 

English is a fucking piece of work. You seriously do not even know how to parse him. He talks like a pastiche of Rider Haggard, Grant Morrison, and a normal kid; he seems to either be trolling the whole fucking world so insanely hard you have to give him major props for effort or he really, really, really does not understand why KK and Strider and everyone else give him the side-eye whenever he goes off about man’s great love for his fellow man and the noblest of all affections. You think he’s probably either bi or just totally on another planet; you’ve seen him dallying (and dallying is the word) with a chick from the girls-only dorm, colloquially the Virgin Vault, but you have not heard word one from Strider about any activity that could remotely lead to sexiling. Apparently English likes to take his lady friends to the local pistol range for mutual shootin’ shenanigans, but either they don’t like to come home and see his ~~etchings~~ skulls or he just has his way with them off-campus. 

You think it’s probably the former. 

Then there’s Strider, who has not suspended his campaign to drive KK absolutely permanently shithouse maggots. The milk theft incident had been followed by a ramen theft and then a _second_ frozen edamame theft, after which KK had apparently appealed to his mysterious parents and a small cheap dorm-room fridge had appeared to replace his and Gamzee’s broken one. After that there was considerably less yelling in the kitchen. 

Eridan had appealed to your RA and then to Res Life about the shittiness of the kitchen and, lo and befuckinghold, the range had gotten repaired and St. G had come back from Target with a boxful of basic kitchen shit and a manifest to hand in to Res Life along with his receipts. He’d grinned when Eridan squealed like a goddamn teenage girl over some of the shit he’d bought, and demanded in return only that Eridan make something decent for dinner. Which he had. 

St. G wasn’t a bad guy, you realized, the second time he handed you a beer. You’d asked him about being an RA and he’d told you both delicious horror stories, and asked you about your classes in a way that wasn’t obnoxious, offered some advice, and most of all just honest to fuck enjoyed the unpronounceable stuff Eridan cooked. You could tell how much it meant, just looking at how he was beaming behind the hornrims and the fading wine-purple-brown forelock. That stupid wonderful smile _did things_ to you. 

But going back to Strider. You think he’s actually mounting an actual campaign either to drive KK sufficiently batty to kill him via aneurysm or stroke or whatever _or_ to get into his pants, and you honestly cannot figure out which. When Strider had gone tearing off after English, katana at the ready, after that extremely fucking amusing incident where English had apparently either hacked his roomie’s machine or just taken advantage of a lax moment in Strider security, KK had taken it upon himself to stop Strider committing murder and getting himself kicked out of Anningley, and apparently had _A Moment_ with Strider while he was at it. You hadn’t been there to actually tell for yourself, but you were more and more convinced that the blond asshole had it seriously very terribly bad for your best friend, and unfortunately had decided to express his feelings along the lines of kindergarteners in a playground. 

You said as much to KK in the hippie hut, sharing one of Lalonde’s Djarum Blacks. You all preferred the milder, sweeter Specials, but apparently Lalonde’s connection had dried up and she was reduced to sourcing the gothic shit on the internet. You give her kudos for maintaining your supply chain even if the goods are less than optimal. 

“I don’t even fucking get it, Captor,” he groans, lying back against a makeshift pillow consisting of his hoodie and your backpack. “I’m like I don’t even _know_ how more clearly I can put it that I AM NOT FUCKING INTERESTED in anything at all he may have to offer. Ever.”

“Poor Strider,” you say. “Spurned by your delicate fucking foot, KK.”

“Fuck you, you aren’t helping. Seriously, how do I get him to just leave me the fuck alone?”

“I dunno. Maybe you could have an actual honest discussion with him without either of you resorting to irony or fulminant fucking shrieks.”

“Yeah, like that would _ever_ happen.” Karkat sighs and reaches for the cigarette. “Dammit. You and Ampora are all like fucking perfect and shit. I admit to a flicker of envy.”

“Awww.” You hand it over and ruffle his hair, earning yourself a look of death. “KK, honey, it’ll happen in time, don’t push things.”

“Shut the livid fuck up, Captor.” 

“Yessir.”

After a moment or two he adds, thoughtfully, “I seriously don’t get it. If he was trying to get my attention, he’s done that, he did it like a fucking semester ago. If he wants to annoy the wriggly shit out of me, he’s done _that_. If he wants me to suddenly go “oooh Mister Strider you and your shitty anime swords are the measure of my dreams” he is gonna be sorely fucking disappointed.”

“Maybe,” you point out, “maybe he’s as lacking in social graces as you are and simply has _no idea_ how to court somebody without being a dickhole to them. You want I should have a word?”

“Fuck _no_ , Captor. Do not you even think of daring.”

You smirk. “It might do some good.”

KK rolls over and _glares_ at you and dang, but he gives good glare. His eyes look burgundy in this light, a wonderful dark rich red-brown, and yeah, okay, you can see why a guy might act insanely stupid when in his presence. Mostly you just want to hug him and mess up his hair. “--Okay, okay, jesus. I won’t say a thing. I will just stand over here and go d’aww every now and then.”

“I do not get,” says KK, handing you back the cigarette, “I do not fucking get why everyone and their motherfucking roommate thinks that because I dislike Strider I wish to get naked with him. I fucking _hate_ the guy, okay? Like that’s it. What about ‘I hate him’ translates in your weird bifurcated brain to ‘I want him to take me to prom’?”

You can’t help laughing at that and you sort-of choke on clove smoke and it takes a little while before you can get yourself back in any shape to answer. “Fuck, I love that mental image. Which one of you would wear the dress?”

“Him. Definitely him. I would not look good in a dress.”

“Oh, I dunno, KK. You could rock something in a nice dark red.”

“Fuck, Captor, you have been hanging around Ampora way the fuck too much. No. No and also no, I am not even having this discussion with you right now. Gimme that.”

You pass the butt back and lace your fingers behind your head. “Fine. Change of subject. I’m thinking of offering to run lights for the spring production.”

He looks up at you. “Really?”

“Yup. Shit is simple as fuck, it’s an older board and the cues are easy as hell to program. I fucked around with Lightboard M back in high school, I figure I can work out their board with no problem.”

“You did tech?”

“I guess you could call it that? Super primitive, though. As long as someone else hangs the fucking lights I can tell them when to turn on and off.”

KK tilts his head and you aren’t quite sure how to parse the look on his face. “What?”

“...Can you show me?”

“Sure,” you say. “I didn’t know you were even interested, man.”

“I’m kind of...curious?”

“Come over to the theater with me tomorrow. Eridan got me a real quick interview with the stage manager, I should be able to either get a yes or no and if it’s a yes I can show you the lightboard. You think you want to do something like tech?”  
“Maybe.” KK sighs. “I dunno. I just...I like watching shit, but there’s so much that goes into a show that you never ever know.”

“You are a techie,” you tell him. “Right fucking there you are one, man. Sorry, it’s your destiny. You have no choice.”

“Fuck you.” He lies back and yawns. “Okay, I’ll come with and I’ll try not to break anything. But I have like no experience with this shit.”

“That’s cool. They’re used to freshmen coming in and being fucking clueless. Fuck, I’m clueless, but I am also a very quick study.”

“Yeah, yeah, you and your magical brain.”

Companionable silence falls. 

~

It takes you by _complete_ surprise when you find Dave Strider on the balcony in the wee hours, draped over the railing with none of his usual grace. His customary shades dangle from one hand and his fucked-up white-blond hair is a bit damper than the night’s dew might explain.

You haul up one of the armchairs, not bothering to be quiet about it, and he jerks and lifts his head, blinking at you--yeah, okay, his eyes really _are_ red.

“Strider?”

“Fuck off,” he says, and, wow, he looks like shit.

“You can’t be albino,” you say. “Your pupils are too dark. What the hell, man?”

He blinks. “.......What the _fuck_.”

“I’m just curious, yo.”

You’re not prepared for the weirdness that is Dave Strider not in complete control of himself and it makes you want to wriggle out of your shitty dew-damp armchair and go put an arm around him: but you figure it’d make everything a lot worse if you did that so you just stay where you are and watch him sort of choke and gulp and get his breathing back under control. 

“....for your information,” he says, raw, rasping, “I’m a fucking mutant and I have mutant powers, so don’t fuck with me, Captor. In addition, go the fuck away I am so not in the mood for you right now.”

“Ha,” you say. “Picked the wrong guy to use the mutant line on, have you fucking seen my eyes, dude? Seriously, what is your deal?”

“My _deal_ is I need you to go the fuck away, you are supposed to be a smart kid, how are you this fucking dense--”

Strider cuts himself off and lurches to his feet, and you think he’s going to be ill over the balcony rail but he just pushes past you and into the dorm, and you figure either he’ll make it to a bathroom or he’ll decorate the floor and neither of those outcomes are your problem but _fuck_.

You at least finish your cigarette and check your watch. Not so horribly late. It’s just gone one. Pitching the butt over the balcony’s railing, you settle your hoodie more comfortably round your shoulders and you head inside. If you happen to come across a Strider in extremis you’ll deal with him; otherwise you have a date with your roommate that you’re looking forward to.


	2. Chapter 2

As a matter of fact you don’t run into a Strider in extremis, and when you get back to your room Eridan has lit a couple of beeswax candles and has drawn back his bedcurtains with a couple of French-hook earrings that glint in the warmth of the candlelight, and in that light his skin sends you searching for images that are beyond you, alabaster, porcelain, warm soft marble. You are so hungry, and he is so _good_.

In the morning your left arm is asleep because he’s lying on it and you think he is possibly drooling on your hair and you smile sleepily and burrow closer, tucking your head under his chin. Today has very little on the agenda other than getting his purple streak sorted out, for the purposes of which you are going over to Rose and Kanaya’s to use their marginally more civilized bathroom. Yesterday he’d driven, by himself, into town to pick up what he needed at the Sally’s in the strip mall, and you had been so fucking proud it had been difficult not to say anything. 

Eridan sighs into your hair and yeah, you’re pretty sure he’s drooling on you, and that makes you snicker, and that wakes him up more. “Mmmh,” he says. 

“Yup.” You can’t do much with your left arm until he gets off of it and lets the circulation resume, but you walk your right hand up his chest and your fingertips drift little touches around a nipple. It’s so much fun to do that, watch the pink little bud of flesh stand up all proud and indignant. Eridan makes a strangled little noise and moves against you and hello, yes, how about that, it seems that various parts of you and him have much the same concepts in mind. “--Roll over just a bit,” you ask him, and with another little noise he obeys and you can fish your dead arm out from under him and slither down the bed, dropping kisses on his chest and stomach as you go. He’s so _warm_ when he sleeps, it’s lovely, and even the fact that you have killer fucking pins and needles going in your left hand doesn’t make it any less lovely to nuzzle the heat of him and feel that warmth radiating through your own skin. 

“Ngh,” he says, as you lick. “Sol.”

“Shut up,” you agree, and then he’s in your mouth and nobody says anything at all for several minutes. Or at least nothing remotely coherent. Noises are definitely made.

God, you love him so _much_. 

~

You’re back from the shower and nuking water for Eridan’s horrible fucking tea when someone bangs on the door, and you have a look at your watch. Huh. Nine. Not ideal for a Saturday but not as bad as it could be, you’ve been woken up at six before for no good fucking reason (ok maybe that was a good reason, it was during the plague-halls-of-Mogdana episode right after school started). 

Eridan groans a put-upon groan and sits up in bed. Your tiny shitty dorm microwave beeps and you take the mug out and put his teabag in before going to stare through the peephole. “What the fuck, English?”

“Captor, I’m awfully sorry to disturb you,” he says through the door and you still can’t quite work out if the accent’s real or a really good fake. It’s not completely Brit, not fresh-off-the-boat, but it’s definitely got some BBC overtones. 

“Let him in,” Eridan sighs. You hand him the tea before going to unlock the door. 

“What is it?”

Jake English looks even more dorky than usual in a pair of green flannel PJ pants and no shirt. You have to admit that the no-shirt part is less dorky than the pants. Kid works out or something. “I really am sorry--good morning, Ampora--it’s just...”

“What’s wrong with him?”

English blinks at you. So does Eridan. 

“I ran into him on the balcony last night, he looked like ass. He sick or what?”

You can’t quite escape being aware of the actual concern in English’s eyes, which are a shade of green you would regard with serious suspicion were it not for the fact you live in Gresley. As KK had said, this is the fucked-up-eye-color dorm, hands down, no question. “I’m afraid so, he’s not feeling at all well and we don’t have anything like, ah, medicine, other than some Hello Kitty bandaids and I think a bottle of aspirin that’s probably ripe for the museum by now...”

You _sigh_. “Okay, okay, come in, jesus. He keep you up all night?”

“Not _all_ night.” You and Eridan share a look. Strider is absolutely the kind of twerp who would deliberately ignore symptoms until they made him fall over, and you both know it because you are also exactly that kind of twerp. You nuke another mug of water and you make English instant coffee because fuck, dude looks like he needs it. The gratitude in his eyes when you hand over the mug makes you think of how desperately you’d appreciated it when Karkat did just the same goddamn thing for you back in the start of the year, and that gives you a sneaky idea.

An idea that’s probably very bad and you shouldn’t go with it. 

Fuck it. “Sit down, jeez. What’s he got, do you know?”

Eridan is watching you, hands wrapped round his teacup. You think he’s smiling a bit. 

“I’m not quite sure, he seemed fine yesterday morning but I didn’t see much of him all day--I was at the computer lab working on a project--and when I got back he was pretty subdued but I didn’t think anything of it, he’s often like that these days!”

“Subdued? _Strider_?”

English looks over at Eridan, nodding. “I know! It’s odd. I think he’s perhaps having a hard time in a class or two. Anyway, he came back in last night quite late--must’ve been after you saw him on the balcony, Captor--and went straight to bed but then he woke me up maybe an hour later when he got up in a hurry and ran for the loo. I thought, well, chap needs a bit of privacy but when he didn’t come back for half an hour I went after him and--” English shrugs. “Either he’s eaten something he didn’t ought to’ve or he has a tummy bug.”

You _sigh_. So does Eridan: he doesn’t need this kind of shit. Lysol is in everything’s near future. Your idea seems suddenly rather less worthwhile but fuck it, maybe it’ll help, it can’t make shit a great deal worse, right?

“Is he runnin a temperature?” Eridan asks.

“I think so, yeah.”

“Okay.” He sits up in bed and you keep quiet because nngh, Eridan telling people what to do does things to you. “Sol and I got shit we need to get done today but here’s what I suggest you do. I can give you some stuff that will probably help his stomach a bit, but if it’s a virus there’s not a shitload anyone can do but wait for it to go away.”

English nodnods.

“Water first. If he can’t keep that down don’t try anythin else for a while, but maybe gatorade, that shit’s got like electrolytes and stuff in it. If he hangs on to water for like an hour you can maybe try a cracker. Alternatively you could just haul his ass over to the health center and let them deal with him.”

“I’d rather not,” English says. “He’s already sort of moribund from mortification.”

“Fair enough,” Eridan says, nodding. “I’m guessin you don’t think he needs the rest a the dorm knowin about this.”

Nodnod.

“I do, however,” Eridan adds, looking at you, “think maybe you oughtta go talk to Kar.”

 _God_ you love him.

“Vantas?” English asks, finishing his coffee. He looks a little less worn than he had when he’d banged on your door. “Why him?”

“Cause your roomie has it bad for that dude. Like, pathological bad. Go tell Kar that Strider’s unwell, see what he says. If he’s like yeah whatever, okay, you’re on your own; if he evinces the slightest bit a interest or concern you have fuckin got to drag that dude down the hall and let him get his Florence Nightingasshole on.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” you add. “KK’s not the type to spread malicious gossip around without good reason, so he’s not about to be all like HAHA EVERYONE GO LAUGH AT DAVE STRIDER. And if he’s as retarded for the guy as I’m pretty sure he is he’s not gonna be able to resist the temptation to help him out.”

“D’you really think that’s advisable?” English bites his lip. “I mean. I know Vantas is hiding his feelings, he’s a classic example, but it could go rather dramatically wrong.”

“Nothin ventured, nothin gained,” Eridan points out. “You could be doin him the biggest fuckin favor ever.”

English apparently comes to a conclusion and sets his mug down on your desk (lysol lysol lysol) and straightens his shoulders with a bit of a smile. “You chaps are absolute and utter bricks, I have to say. I shall take your advice! --You mentioned medicine, Mr. Ampora?”

“Right, right.” Eridan lies back against his pillows as if the exchange has exhausted him. “Sol?”

You nod and go rootle around in the litter of pharmaceuticals in his desk drawer and locate the promethazine. “Like I said,” Eridan continues, “if he can’t keep water down don’t bother with this shit, but if he’s able to handle water you can get a couple of these down him and see if that helps. I don’t have anythin really hardcore like ondansetron but I have found that this shit does the job.”

You count out six of the pills into your hand and close the bottle, putting it away, before dropping them into English’s cupped hands. 

“Thank you,” he says. “So much. Deeply appreciated.”

“Go on, get outta here,” you tell him. “I hope Strider feels better.”

“So do I,” English says fervently, and then he’s gone. 

“The livid fuck was that all about?” Eridan asks, watching you with bright eyes. You ply the hand sanitizer bottle before you go sit on the edge of his bed. 

“Fuck if I know, but we might just have done Strider a gigantic favor the likes of which is unknown in college history. Can’t you picture it, KK fussing over his jackass of a beloved?”

“Yeah, I can, which is what’s so fucked up.” Eridan runs a hand down your bathrobed back. “You are, by the way, the fuckin best, Sol. Think you need to be told that more often.”

“Me? No. You. It is so totally you, jesus, the way you were all like instructing and commanding and shit.”

He chuckles and curls an arm around you and you happily wriggle down to lie beside him on the bed. “You like that, huh.”

“Fuck yes.”

“Makin a mental note, Sol.”

~

You walk, rather than drive, over to Rose and Kanaya’s, mostly because you plan on enjoying some adult beverages at some point in the afternoon which does not really work with either you or Eridan driving back home; the Sally’s Beauty Supply bag with Eridan’s hair arcana in it is easy enough to haul over by foot. Less easy is the garment bag containing whatever he plans to wear while doing his hair. You’re carrying the former, he the latter. 

“I’m gonna have to ask Lalonde about Strider, you know,” you say.

“Course you are. An I’m gonna have to listen to the answer because fuck if my curiosity ain’t piqued.”

“Long’s we’re on the same page.”

“Same fuckin paragraph.”

While you’re now convinced that both Lalonde and Strider come by their hair color naturally, Kanaya’s green-over-black _has got_ to be artificial, and you’re a little pleased when it’s Kanaya who takes you up to their bathroom and gets Eridan prepared. There is clingfilm and tinfoil involved as well as eyewatering chemicals. 

“What...exactly are you doing?” you ask, perched on the bathroom counter. Eridan is sitting on the edge of the bath with his hair pinned and clipped and a black towel round his shoulders. She’s mixing up developer and powder bleach but she’s putting something else in there as well, something blue-violet. 

“Toner,” Kanaya says. “Even high-volume developer and bleach will only get out so much color and there tends to be a yellow-brassy tint left after the reaction’s finished. This will leave him with an almost white lock and make the purple dye more lasting.”

She offers him the bowl and brush but he looks up at her, face vulnerable without his specs, and shakes his head. “Can you do it, Kan?”

“Of course.” She smiles, and you are comforted by the smile even at a distance and not its intended target: Maryam is one of the most fucking _comforting_ and comfortable people you have ever met, and you fucking love talking topology with her while she sews and you scribble take-home-test answers. 

You watch. She snaps on gloves and begins to paint her white mixture over Eridan’s forelock. The chemical smell fills the little room and makes your eyes smart, but you aren’t about to go off and leave him all vulnerable and shit. He looks a little more comfortable once she starts, and you think he’s probably done this himself ever so many times, but it’s always a little jarring having someone else in charge. 

She works fast, though, and it’s not long before the entire lock of hair is saturated with the blue-white goop; then she wraps it up neatly in clingfilm and clips the whole thing securely out of the way. “And now you wait.”

“How long?” he wants to know.

“We’re lifting out dye over dye so I would say we start testing at fifteen minutes.”

Eridan nods. “....Can I have a drink?”

“I think you ought.” Kanaya gives him a hand up and then a hug, carefully, and he clings to her and you are not at all jealous not even a little tiny bit goddamnit. 

Sigh. He comes over to you and takes your hand, though, and that’s lovely, and by the time you get back downstairs to where Rose has set out drinks and what you think she’d probably call _a cold collation_ , you feel more or less yourself. 

“So,” you say, folding up smoked salmon on an adorably tiny slice of bread. “Your brother.”

“My brother,” says Rose. “Who is an idiot. I mean, this is common knowledge, I merely mention it in passing.”

“Your brother, who a little while ago managed to get _Karkat Vantas_ interested in his ass in the sense of stopping said ass from committing gross messy murder, is apparently indisposed.”

Eridan has settled next to you and reaches for one of your slices of salmon: you whap his hand with the back of your tiny fork. “Get your own, moocher.”

He whimpers pathetically. “I’m handicapped. I have toxic chemicals on my head.”

“You have toxic chemicals on the brain, best beloved,” you say, and sigh, and smear goat cheese on another adoratiny piece of bread before draping a bit of salmon on it. “There. Happy?”

“Ecstatic,” he says and smiles a stupid purple-eyed smile at you and it takes you a little while to come back to earth and pay attention to Rose Lalonde. 

“--so rarely ill that he has no idea how to deal with it,” she’s saying. “I do recall once when we were both quite young he ate something that didn’t agree with him and he was just astonishingly, breathtakingly miserable; it wasn’t so much the physical discomfort as the total loss of autonomy. Dave does not deal well with not being in control.”

“He looked pretty lousy when I saw him last night. And his roommate seems somewhat concerned, although with English you sort of have to wonder how much of that is real and how much of it is him being Master and Commander inside his own head.”

Lalonde laughs and refills both your glasses. It’s not good champagne, they don’t drink the good stuff during the day, but it does the job. “I think you did just right, both of you. Vantas needs a kick in the pants to either confess his feelings or reject them entirely, and Dave could do with some fussing, I imagine. I don’t think English is quite the sort to fuss the way he’d like.”

“The idea of Jake English fussin kinda breaks my brain, Rose,” Eridan complains and drains his glass. “It’s like...fuck, I dunno, wrong. He doesn’t fuss. He swashbuckles.”

“But that makes it so much more adorable when he does fuss,” she points out. He has to think about that. 

“I guess you’re right, but it still feels odd to think about. Can I have more wine?”

“Not until you’ve finished with your hair, dearest. Come to think of it, what time is it?”

He checks his watch. “Uh. Shoulda tested a couple minutes ago.”

“I don’t think you’re in serious danger,” Rose says. “--Kanaya?”

It turns out that he’s not ready yet; he’s not ready for another ten minutes and you can _see_ how antsy he is by the time the women deem his hair primed for the rinsing. You come with him up to the bathroom and you hold his hand while they do their work, carefully shielding his face with a towel while they use the showerhead on its hose to wash the clotted bleach away. The hair revealed is actually very close to white, you’re kind of impressed; you’ve seen people bleaching their hair before and it always ends in a gross yellowy-orange flat color, but this is pretty goddamn impressive. Kanaya’s toner, you think. Must remember that shit. 

They wash it for a while, applying conditioner over and over to soothe the outraged keratin; but eventually they let him up and he beams stupidly at his skunk-stripe in the mirror and tells them they are perfect. Now it’s just the gloopy semipermanent violet gloss, almost black when it comes out of the squeeze-bottle, and more clingfilm and maybe a brief chemical-smelling makeout session or two while you wait for that shit to sink in. 

He showers and when he comes out, wrapped in his violet-black dressing-gown, you are so struck by memory that for a moment you can’t breathe. He had looked just like that the morning you’d both gone to Target, during orientation week: his hair had held just that same rich royal tint and you’d hated him, oh, you’d hated him but you couldn’t look away, and he comes over to you and looks concernedly into your eyes and when you throw yourself at him and kiss him stupid neither Rose nor Kanaya say a goddamn thing, just withdrawing silently from the room. 

“Ngh,” you say. “Do you. Do you even know. Ngh.”

“Shhh, Sol. Shh.” He holds you close, you can feel the warmth of the shower in his skin through the silk robe. “I’m an idiot, remember? But I’m your idiot.”

You grab his lapels and you kiss him again and then you’ve undone the belt of his dressing-gown and he’s warm and soft-strong and nudging and insistent and _right there_

and 

and

and _maybe it takes the pair of you a little while to rejoin the ladies_ is all. 

He’ll have bruises from the octagonal tile of the bathroom floor, as will you, and neither of you care. You sort of float downstairs in a haze of total fucking satisfaction and also champagne, and Kanaya and Rose come over to wrap the both of you up in their arms and marvel over Eridan, touching the perfect dark-violet of his hair, cupping his face in their hands, and you would probably kill anybody else on the planet who dared to do that but not these two women, they have license where nobody else could. He beams at them, in the same stupid haze of contentment, and they bring him wine and feed him grapes and it takes you a little while to come back down to earth and wonder how the horrible Strider doth fare.

Your phone buzzes. 

GT: Hey, Captor!  
GT: I do hope I’m not interrupting you at work. But I’m afraid I require your advice once again.  
TA: what2 the ii22ue, englii2h  
GT: It’s, ah. My roommate.  
TA: ii gathered that. what ha2 he done now?  
GT: He and Vantas had a bit of a spat, I fear.  
TA: when you 2ay a 2pat.  
TA: what exactly do you mean.  
TA: ha2 kk been there all fuckiing day?  
TA: tell me the hap2, englii2h.  
GT: Er. The ‘haps’ as you so colorfully put it are that I went as you and Mr. Ampora suggested to go and see Vantas and request his assistance this morning.  
GT: He agreed with some alacrity!  
GT: I then...proceeded to leave the two of them alone and get some work done over at the library. When I returned just now Vantas was gone and Strider was...er, shall we say curled up in misery?  
TA: ii2 he 2tiill beiing 2iick?  
GT: I don’t believe he has the wherewithal for it just now.  
TA: what ii2 iit that you want me two do  
GT: Just...er....perhaps if you could locate Vantas and find out from him just what went down?  
TA: ii can try  
TA: 2iit tiight, englii2h.

“Welp,” you declare. “KK has officially flipped his shit.”

“Again?”

“Guess so. That was English. Apparently the first part of our nefarious fucking plan worked but unfortunately the pair of them are still themselves and they had some kind of fucked-up argument or other and now English wants me to find KK. I feel we need a soundtrack.”

“Jesus,” says Eridan, and swallows champagne. “Well. I guess we better get over there.”

“You don’t have to. English only commandeered myself.”

“If you think I am lettin you handle somethin of this magnitude of fuckin idiocy on your own, Sollux Captor, you got another think comin,” says your beloved. “Rose, Kan, thanks so much for your hospitality an your assistance, I deeply fuckin appreciate it, also this here bottle which I am commandeerin as a casualty of fuckin circumstance.”

Kanaya sighs. “I’ll drive you back.”


	3. Chapter 3

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) has begun pestering turntechGodhead (TG)! --

TT: Dave?  
turntechGodhead (TG) is away!  
turntechGodhead (TG) has posted the following away message: sorry im not home right now im walking in the spiderweb but leave a message and ill call you back  
TT: Fuck.

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) has begun pestering timaeusTestified (TT)! --

TT: Yes?   
TT: Has he contacted you yet?   
TT: If you count a series of increasingly less coherent attempts to pester me on his excuse for a phone, yes.   
TT: Care to elucidate?   
TT: Not particularly. My very dear and extremely unsettling little sibling, this is what I think they call a _guy thing_.   
TT: I _am_ twenty, my equally dear and breathtakingly irritating elder sibling, and I think perhaps I know Dave a little better than you do by this point.   
TT: Will you hark at the child.  
TT: Your particular brand of uncanny and upsetting insight blended with ill-applied junior armchair psychology is not, actually, what he needs right now.  
TT: Kid is feeling like merry hell and has a bizarre cheery what-ho anachronism of a skull-happy roommate to deal with as well as this Vantas individual. You are a bit much to take on top of all of that.   
TT: I’m flattered you think so highly of my ability to affect others.   
TT: Vantas is a complex character. It doesn’t help that a semi-protege of mine and his lover have taken it upon themselves to play collective Emma.   
TT: Oh God.   
TT: I believe it may yet come out all right, but at the moment we’re sort of at the bridge in the last third of the film where it’s entirely possible it won’t.   
TT: Dave has distinguished himself by behaving like a complete idiot to Vantas prior to this. There was an incident where he completely and utterly misread--or ignored, I’m tempted to say--every single intimation that what he was about to do was the stupidest thing since the German invasion of Russia and embarrassed Vantas beyond all measure. Squirrels were thrown.   
TT: Squirrels.   
TT: Squirrels. Do not ask.   
TT: Around the same time Dave’s paragon of a roommate either managed to hack into his chat client or--which is vastly more likely--happened to catch him at a rare moment of forgetfulness and was able to access his pesterlog account. Dave reacted much as you might expect.   
TT: Oh Christ. Was that about a month and a half ago? I got a message from him that I thought either had to be a really astonishingly good troll or written by someone who wasn’t him. --Which sword did he use?   
TT: Yes, that would have been Jake English. Dave selected the katana rather than the wakizashi, presumably for the advantage in reach.   
TT: Was he running after--oh, hell, never mind. Tell the damned story, Lalonde.   
TT: Yes, he was in hot pursuit, and I imagine he’d intended to frighten and/or impress his roommate like billy-oh, but Vantas went after him and from what I hear--I have sources--there was a sort of flying tackle thing involved.   
TT: ...I can see where this is going, yes.   
TT: Quite. So you see there’s some history involved. I’m a little concerned because first and foremost Dave is not at his best when not in total physical control, as you well know, and second I believe Vantas would not deal well with what he might view as trifling with his affections, were those affections eventually to have been pronounced.   
TT: Why is it that our entire clusterfuck of a not-family doesn’t actually learn from the preceding generation’s example? --Don’t answer that. I am sighing, Rose. This is me sighing. I might even wearily rub the bridge of my nose between finger and thumb.   
TT: And a hundred thousand fangirls _quiver_.  
TT: So are you going to c&p his pesterlogs or am I going to have to ask ma belle soeur to do her terrifying dipsomaniac hacker act?   
TT: I fucking yield. Jesus dick, Lalonde, you are far more trouble than you deserve to be.   
TT: I know, dearest brother. I know.   
TT: Fuck it. Here goes.   
TT: TG: hey   
TT: TT: sup little man   
TT: TG: not much you know how it goes   
TT: TG: hows tricks out in fucking texas   
TT: TT: Not too shabby. What do you want?   
TT: TG: want   
TT: TG: you wound me bro   
TT: TG: cant a strider pester his own big brother without being second guessed  
TT: TG: wait big brother  
TT: TG: fuck that works doesnt it  
TT: TG: my big brother is watching me  
TT: TT: Kid, what do you actually want?  
TT: TG: advice i guess  
TT: TG: no fuck it  
TT: TG: this is stupid  
TT: Then nothing for about half an hour, and then this:  
TT: TG: bro  
TT: TG: what do  
TT: TT: What do what? You’re not making any sense, kid.   
TT: TG: guh i feel like ass  
TT: TG: like  
TT: TG: some absolute cockweasel has like burrowed into my skull and is playing drums in there  
TT: TG: and he brought his friends who are having a big old german scheisse porn movie party   
TT: TG: did you know it was possible to throw up stuff you havent even eaten yet  
TT: TT: What the hell. Kid. Are you okay?  
TT: TG: thought i kinda covered that in previous messages  
TT: TG: but for the sake of clarity  
TT: TG: no  
TT: TG: i am not okay  
TT: TG: i am like the farthest from okay i have ever been   
TT: TG: its like im approaching okay from the other direction   
TT: TT: What the hell is wrong?  
TT: TG: dunno  
TT: TG: ate something  
TT: TG: or hellvirus  
TT: TG: also  
TT: TG: think i fucked things up irreparably  
TT: TG: with this person  
TT: TG: which sucks like   
TT: TG: worse than the hurling  
TT: TT: Shit, man.   
TT: TT: Do y  
TT: TG: brb barf o’clock  
TT: TT: Fuck.   
TT: TT: Dave.  
TT: TT: When you’re back,  
TT: TT: Listen to me.   
TT: TT: Whatever’s going on with you and this other person can wait.  
TT: TT: Get your weird-ass roommate to go bring you gatorade. And keep warm.   
TT: TT: I’d call Lalonde to go check on your ass but I got a feeling you wouldn’t thank me for it. Still, call her, okay, if you need anything. Wish I could be there myself.  
TT: TT: Dave?  
TT: TT: ….Dave, jesus fuck. You better not be passed out somewhere.  
TT: TG: nah  
TT: TG: mostly all barfed out anyhow  
TT: TG: was wondering how long you planned to go on talking  
TT: TT: Fuck you, little man.  
TT: TG: ew  
TT: TG: gross  
TT: TG: im being sexually harassed by my bro  
TT: TT: You sound better.  
TT: TT: Listen, seriously.   
TT: TT: If whoever this is is even worth your time they’ll know not to write you off for whatever you did or said while you were sick as a pike.  
TT: TT: Not your fault, bro.  
TT: TG: yeah  
TT: TG: maybe  
TT: TG: still think i fucked shit up permanently  
TT: TG: ngh  
TT: TG: maybe gonna try lying down for a while  
TT: TG: ttyl  
TT: TT: Feel better, Dave.  
TT: TG: yeah yeah  
TT: That’s the last I heard from him about an hour ago.   
TT: My God, Dirk.  
TT: I’m honestly impressed.  
TT: Thanks. This is useful information.   
TT: Right.  
TT: Tell me you haven’t got a cunning plan.  
TT: Tell me that even if it’s not true.   
TT: I do not have a cunning plan, Dirk.   
TT: Thank fuck for that. --Shit, I have to go. Keep me posted, will you?   
TT: Of course.

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) ceased pestering timaeusTestified (TT)! --

~

Kanaya drops you off outside Gresley and you smuggle your bottle inside under cover of Eridan’s garment bag. He hadn’t gelled his hair and it’s curling in soft waves as it dries; you are aware of noticing this and thinking that you probably oughtn’t to notice this. You have friends in need to attend to.

"First order a business," he’s saying as you make your way to the room. "You go talk to English and get him to explain what the fuck is goin on. Second, we find Kar."

"I can handle that," you nod, and lean up to steal a kiss from him before departing Englishward. He tastes like champagne and clove cigarettes and you really wish for a moment that Karkat and Dave could sort out their own fucking woes without your help because you would like nothing better than to pin Eridan to his bed and nibble on parts of his anatomy, and nngh, you really need to quit thinking like that, it is not a good idea in your current trousers. 

"Hurry back," Eridan says, and kisses you again, and _nngh_. 

English looks anxious enough to take your mind off your pants, thank fuck. You peer past him into the room and make out a shock of white-blond hair tangled and sweat-damp against a heap of pillows; he slips out of the room to talk to you so as not to wake Strider. 

"Thank you for coming," he says. "I know it’s not convenient and all--"

"What the hell is going on?" you inquire.

"Well. Just as you and Ampora suggested I went to have a word with Vantas this morning and--well, just as you said he sort of volunteered himself to be of assistance! It was touching. And he told me to, ah, go away, in rather more pungent terms, so off I went, and got some proper work done at the library. Honestly, I thought the romantic tension on this hall was in serious danger of being sorted out!"

"Optimism is the sign of an untried mind, English," you tell him. "So KK got his care on and things were going swimmingly and then what?"

"I don’t know! When I got back Vantas had gone and Strider was...really rather unhappy." The look on his face tells you that he’d been actually worried for his astonishingly annoying roommate--was, in fact, still worried for his astonishingly annoying roommate. "From what I was able to get out of him they had had some sort of row and Vantas had stormed out slamming the door behind him--which I can corroborate, all our whiteboard markers were all over the floor when I got back. He won’t talk to me."

"He talked to anyone else?"

"He was busy with his phone earlier, I believe he was texting somebody."

Rose, you think. Maybe Rose. "Okay. Is he sleeping now?"

"Yes," English says, unhappy. "I fetched him the rubbish bin and some water."

"Good plan. Okay. Listen, jeez, English, don’t look like that, you’re all mournful and shit." He really is. It doesn’t sit well on his broad cheerful face.   
"I can’t help feeling that I’ve let the side down somehow," he admits.

"Fuck that. You are an awesome roommate if somewhat bizarre and skull-oriented, yeah? Listen. I’m gonna go see if I can find KK and talk him down. I was supposed to take him over to the theater this evening anyhow to talk to the tech guys, I dunno if that’s even still a thing that’s gonna happen but that’s a great excuse for tracking his ass down if I ever heard one."

English smiles a wan bucktoothed smile at you. Aw, fuck. They’re all so damn messed up and it’s kind of adorable, and you’re aware you’re thinking that from a position of considerable privilege. "Thank you, Captor."

"Don’t thank me until I actually locate him. And, jeez, seriously, chill out. Keep an eye on Strider but don’t feel you gotta, like, hover."

He nodnods and slips back into his room, and you go to collect Eridan and search for your best friend. 

~

"Don’t want to talk about it," KK says. He’s said that the last three times you’ve prompted on the way over to the theater building. 

"Yeah, I get that, but the dude’s kind of fucked up, KK--"

"I _don’t_. Want to fucking _talk_ about it," he says and oh jesus christ can you actually hear tears in his voice? You glance over but behind the spikes of hair it’s impossible to make out much beyond a truculently set jaw. 

"Okay. Subject dismissed, KK. I hear you. --I just have to talk real quick to the tech director, sit tight here?"

Here is the bench inside the lobby of the arts and theater building. "Rather sit tight outside so I can smoke."

"Fine, that works. Just don’t go anywhere, okay? I am like ninety percent sure I can snag the lights job and then it’s a question of looking over the equipment and I can show you shit."

KK nods, without much interest, and goes off to perch on the brick retaining wall and light up. He looks...smaller than usual, you think. Less _himself_ somehow. 

"Mr. Captor?" inquires a low rumbling voice, and you turn and look up at the man-mountain that is Zahhak, the senior double-major in fucking physics and theater who’s run the scene shop and the tech crew with a bulgy iron fist for two years now. Kanaya has told you all about his little ways. 

You stick out a skinny, bony, pallid hand in a cheerful greeting. Zahhak blinks and then envelops your hand in one of his enormous sweaty paws, and you can feel his strength and the fact that he is deliberately not using it, and you have thrown him off guard without even saying a word. "Sollux Captor," you say, grinning. "Thanks for giving me a chance, I know freshers don’t generally end up running tech."

Definitely off guard. He flushes a little and you’re aware again of how large he is, and how much goddamn hair he’s got pulled back into that careless ponytail. He even has welding goggles pushed up on his forehead. Some football armor and this dude could star in the remake of Road Warrior. "--Not at all," he rumbles. "In the theater department we’re always interested in getting new students involved. What experience have you had with theater tech?"

You tell him, sketching out the shitty plays you’d focused and run lights and sound for in high school, the time they let you run the follow-spot and how goddamn much fun that had been, but mostly how much you liked programming in each cue and troubleshooting when shit went south. As you discuss this last aspect of your talents Zahhak’s face undergoes a subtle but remarkable change, like the rising of a spring dawn. 

"--As it happens,"" he says. "Our, ah. Our light system is...somewhat glitchy. I was hesitant to take on a new and untried student to run such an unstable collection of equipment, but--"

"Lead me to it," you instruct.

Zahhak nods curtly and strides off to the stairs leading up to the theater balcony and the blocked-off section that stands in for a proper tech booth. Ugh, you think, really, you know it’s not like the campus has a shitton of funds for arts and entertainment but this is kind of fucking pathetic: there’s no soundproofed booth for the tech to lurk in, just this bit of upper-level balcony with the lightboard and soundboard and the little tiny red-gelled anglepoise lamp casting a bleary glow over the sliders. 

You duck under the table and follow the input cables. "Jesus Christ, this shit is old."

"It’s still functional," Zahhak says, and you think he sounds affronted. The repairs that have been done have been done skilfully, though, and when you crawl out dusty and possibly covered in mouse turds you nod. "Yeah, I can see you guys have kept it running. What kind of errors are you seeing?"

This--yeah, this might all even still be analog, but you hope to fuck it isn’t. Zahhak waxes expansive on the subject of your light system’s glitches, and you recognize in his description a bunch of problems you’d dealt with on your ancient high school board and, what’s more, know how to fix here and now. 

"Okay, the thing where you hit the autofade GO and it fades the cue halfway and then stalls? That’s actually probably just crap inside the console, when was the last time you guys took canned air to it? --The contacts stick after a while if there’s enough crap in there and it gives the system conflicting information and--"

"--sets up a feedback loop," Zahhak finishes. "Yes, of course. We’d thought it had to do with a faulty line of code from the last time we had to reinstall the operating system."

"This thing throws sticky contacts like girls throwing thongs at Justin fucking Bieber," you tell him, and tap at a couple of the buttons. "Yeah, gimme a thing of canned air and a phillips-head and I bet this can be made to work just as wonderfully as ever it did back in the Cretaceous."

Zahhak makes a weird sort of choked rumbly noise and you glance over at him and you think he’s actually laughing. 

You get the job. You are not surprised. 

KK is still waiting and he’s got the slightly shaky ill look about him of somebody who has smoked way the hell too many cigarettes in a hurry. You introduce him and Zahhak, say he’s interested in learning more about tech, can you show him over the lightbooth, and a minute or two later you’re back up there in the red dimness of the gelled lamp and you’re telling him all about the programmed cues and how you can fuck with them on the fly if the board is working right and--

"He fucking told me he wanted me," KK says in the middle of a very well-thought-out explanatory speech on the function of the crossfade display. You fall silent.

"KK--"

"Shut up. He told me flat out that he wanted me."

"We kinda knew that, right?"

"Shut _up_. He said he wanted me and then he said he wanted me to be exclusive, like. Not be with Gamzee at all. In any way other than just living with the dude."

 _Oh,_ you think. Jesus fuck, Strider. 

"He actually say ‘I want you’ in the possessive?"

" _Yes_ ," says KK. 

"You know what, I am tempted to say fuck him in the figurative sense because that is shit, you do not tell somebody you want to fucking possess them, like they’re yours to tell what to do. Strider has no right to say what you should or should not feel for your goddamn roommate, KK."

"I _know_ ," he says, his breath catching and hitching in his throat. "I just thought...it...it’d be like...he’s been dancing around this bullshit for so fucking _long_ and I hoped we’d finally just like have it out properly but he’s...and when I said uh dude Gamzee means a lot to me okay he kind of just sort of _shut down_ and said he was sorry for wasting my time."

"Oh, jesus tiddlywinkle _fuck_ ," you say and you put an arm around KK and he’s suddenly clinging to you, all bones and angles and jesus he is tiny, he’s so tiny under his enormous bulky hoodies. You kind of want to punch Strider and at the same time you can’t get English’s worried face out of your head. "KK, look. Look. I know that shit is unconscionable and he deserves a fucking drubbing for all of it but...he’s not well and English says he’s been fucking miserable since he got back, probably a while after you left. I think honestly he’s probably regretting saying that to you."

"Well, fuck, even if he is, then what?" KK asks, muffled in your shoulder. The corner of the lightboard table is digging into your hip and he’s at an awkward angle but you can deal, he’s more important. "Then what? When he’s gotten over his bad hot dog or whatever you think he’s suddenly going to go wait no Karkat I am totes okay with you being cuddlebuddies with your roommate forget all the rancid fucking shit I just spouted at you about feelings and the exclusivity thereof?"

"Nnno. No. Not exactly." Fuck. You hug him tight and you can feel his unhappy tension. "No. I think what happens next is _you_ come back with me and have something to drink, and _he_ next time he wakes up gets told that he’s a dipshit but this is not the end of the world."

Karkat makes a noise that’s half a laugh and half a sob and you hug him tighter for a moment and he goes "oof, Captor, let go, I can’t fucking breathe" and you think he’s going to be okay after all. 

You don’t end up showing him the vagaries of the lightboard that night, actually. What you end up doing is walking him back over to Gresley, to your room, and giving him a couple of glasses of pilfered wine and talking to him about shit that has nothing to do with Strider or Strider’s vicissitudes; and when he’s sleepy and floppy enough to agree to go back to his room and crash for the night you deliver him to Gamzee with a brief precis of the night’s various fuckeries, and you are not surprised to see canny intelligence flicker in the dude’s eyes behind the curtain of crazy hair. "Not to fucking worry, Solbro," he tells you. "I all up and motherfucking _got this shit_."

You think he probably has, in fact, got this shit.

You text Rose.   
hey  
2hiit ii2 2orted out for now  
iill tell you all about iit iin the morniing  
You almost disappoint me, Captor. I had such plans.  
2orry about that  
you may yet have a chance two meddle iin true mary worth 2tyle  
My God, man. I do not pretend to Worth-level meddling capacity.  
Sleep well.  
you two

Eridan’s gone to talk to English, and when you both get back to your room it’s early but you’re so tired, both of you, and half-drunk, and you don’t say anything at all; you just wriggle, together, into his palatial if narrow bed and wrap yourselves together under the covers. You stroke his renewed purple hair as he drifts against you. 

Long motherfucking day.


	4. Chapter 4

This time _he_ wakes _you_ , drifting kisses over your throat and chest so lightly they make their way into whatever it is you’re dreaming: feathers, falling leaves, the soft wings of moths ghosting over your skin. 

"Mmh," you say, sleepily, and he chuckles against you. 

"That’s all I get?"

" _Mmmmmh._ "

You open your eyes and find him smiling at you with his stupid wonderful violet hair sticking up all over the place and his stupid wonderful violet eyes still heavy with sleep, and you catch your breath: how are you _so fucking lucky_ that this right here is happening to you?

Eridan kisses the dent of your navel. "Mornin’," he says. "O eloquent one."

"G’mornin." You make a hand work, after some effort: it pats over the bedclothes until it can tuck a tendril of hair behind Eridan’s ear, cup his cheek. He’s lying with his chin on your stomach, looking intensely self-satisfied. "--what canary did the cat eat now?"

"Fuck, Sol, don’t make me telegraph every single move." He kisses your stomach again and then oh, hey, guess what he’s kissing his way further south and shortly your ability to think shatters and sparkles like frost and you are utterly, utterly gone. 

~

"Remind me," you say a little while later, still tucked up in his bed, watching him bustle about in the black kimono he stole from the costume shop last week. "Remind me why we don’t just borrow a saw off the scene department and cut the bed legs down to match and push those fuckers together because jesus, Eridan, I love you to distraction but this single bed thing is kind of a pain."

He leans over and squeezes the hillock of your toes under the sheets. "Hush. We make do. But when time shall fuckin serve I think I know a brilliant answer to just that very quandary."

The microwave beeps and he takes out your mugs and spoons instant coffee into one for you and his herb tea bullshit into the second. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Next chance we get to sneak into that quad on the corner, you know, the one that’s got one insanely disgustingly lucky sophomore in it and a bunch of empty beds, we go replace my shitty normal bed with a top bunk flipped like yours, and we have ourselves a double fuckin loft bed with space underneath for all kinds a storage."

"...take me to Target," you moan, accepting the cup of three-times-stronger-than-recommended Taster’s Choice and wrapping your hands around it. "Take me to Target and buy me double-bed-sized sheets at once."

"Oooh, Mister Captor," Eridan says, coming over to sit on the side of the bed. You slip a hand round his waist, trace the knobbles of his spine with your fingertips. He’s not as desperately thin as he’d been when both of you started at Anningley, but he is not what you might call anything other than _slender_. He leans down to kiss your forehead. "I gotta measure these shitty excuses for mattresses first, before we make any investments such as layin down funds for sheet sets. But yeah, that needs to happen."

"It really does." You sip your horrible delightful instant coffee and you can tell he’s put the good honey in this, the almost-black buckwheat stuff with the sharp tang that goes so well with the beans. "Also? We need a new white board for the door. One that says in great big black letters _THE DOCTORS ARE NOT IN UNTIL AT LEAST TEN AM, FUCK OFF THIS MEANS YOU_."

"If fucking only." You tug at his dressing-gown and he clambers onto the bed to lie beside you against his heap of pillows. "Why is it that a) people always come to _us_ when shit is going crazy and b) shit can only go crazy super late at night or early in the morning?"

"Fuckin narrative causality." He siiiighs and reaches over for his pills in their little orange plastic bottles. "Shit that can go wrong will go wrong in the most dramatic possible way."

"They teach you that in theater class?"

"Not exactly. Not as such." Eridan swallows his handful of assorted medication and leans over to rest his head on your shoulder. He’s wonderfully warm. "Kinda more a self-evident axiom a life an the universe, Sol."

"Meh." You nuzzle his hair. "Too early for philosophy. Only coffee now."

In fact narrative causality lets you get almost all the way through your cup of black wonderful sweetness, and he’s begun to drowse against your shoulder, you can feel it in the way he’s gone all bonelessly relaxed, before someone knocks on the door. 

Eridan groans but doesn’t move. 

"We’re not here," you yell. 

There’s a pause. 

"That’s an interesting logical puzzle there, chaps," says English from the other side of the door and Eridan groans again and heaves himself off the bed. His hair is a total mess and he looks desperately, breathtakingly appealing in the black silk of the kimono and for a moment you wish Jake English ill. 

You still aren’t wearing any pants, so you stay where you are with your hands wrapped around your coffee mug and regard English through half-lidded eyes when Eridan lets him in. "What is it now?"

"I’m awfully sorry," he says, and if he had a hat he would be twiddling it in his hands; that is the stance of a hat-twiddler if ever you fucking saw one. "But I was wondering if I might possibly beg the loan of a little coffee from you gentlemen."

You and Eridan share a look, and then you push aside the filmy bedcurtains to get a closer look. English does not appear to be a man who has had a restful night’s sleep.

"He keep you up all night?" Eridan’s asking, but he’s also already going to your thing of spring water perched on the dresser and finding a third mug. 

"I’m afraid so," English says. "He, er. He kept on sort of waking up with a little sort of shout and then taking forever to go back to sleep, and I was a bit, well, concerned, you know, and I think he must’ve been having bad dreams because he thrashed around a lot..."

You sigh and lean back against Eridan’s pillows. (Soon you will share pillows. All of them.) "English, you have got to quit fucking worrying about your asshole of a roommate, okay? He’s an asshole. That has nothing to do with you. Put your earbuds in and listen to rollicking adventure music or something and ignore him."

"I can’t," English admits. "It’s...I suppose it’s that he’s never been remotely like this before. It’s unsettling to see someone so bloody self-possessed and emotionless be..."

"A fuckin wreck," Eridan finishes concisely and hands him a cup of instant coffee. "Drink up. I get where you’re comin from, English, I do, but I think maybe this is the kind a situation where you just need to find somewhere else to be and let him work out his fucked-up problems on his own. No use you losin sleep over it."

He leans against the bed and you drift a hand over his back. Mmm. "Do you have, like, _friends_?" you inquire. 

English chuckles a little, staring into the cup. "Er. Not many very close ones, I’m afraid? I don’t seem to be terribly socially adept for some odd reason. Although I don’t have trouble convincing the ladies to come shootin’ with me!"

Wow.

"Fuck social adeptness," says Eridan, and sighs. "I guess we’re your friends, if that counts. Probably more people like you than you think."

"I don’t know about that. I just never really gave it much thought! Schoolwork is more important," English informs you, and both of you snicker at the exact same moment. 

"Fuck, you got all the way to the second semester of freshman year and you’re still thinking like that? English, English, English. You have fucking _got_ to get out more." You kind of feel sorry for the dude, but you never figured him for an emotional pushover. "Taking girls shooting is...well, okay, I guess it’s faintly badass in a derpy sort of way, but there’s more to social life than sharing a target at the range. Develop interests, man. Interests."

"Interests that involve other people," Eridan qualifies. "Anyway, Strider will get over whatever’s gnawing on his improbable ass and you’ll get back to the even tenor of your ways. This too shall pass."

"I suppose you’re right." English swallows coffee like medicine, and then his gaze lights on Yorick, in his new home atop Eridan’s desk, and you can see him light up. Jesus, this kid is weird. "--You’re taking really good care of Yorick, he’s all properly polished!"

"Fuck yes," says Eridan. "As if I’d neglect a skull in my care, English, what must you think a me. He’s a welcome addition to the room."

"I’m glad. It’s dashed heartening to see that other people understand the appeal of the skull! They’re exceedingly badass and also nifty little works of engineering."

You can tell English is about to embark on one of his longwinded dissertations on the wonderful geometry of the fucking zygomatic arch and you forestall him. "Tell you what. You seem like a reasonably handy type of guy. Why don’t you come over to the theater at eleven and see if you might be interested in joining in with the tech crew, they always need an extra pair of hands to help build shit and it’d get you out of the room and away from the Strider. I can introduce you to the guy who runs the crew."

English brightens even further, and you feel an unwelcome stab of pity for the kid, jesus, he really _doesn’t_ have friends, does he. "That sounds like a capital idea! Thank you, Captor, you’re an absolute brick. You too, Ampora. I’m awfully grateful."

"De nada," says Eridan, taking back the empty cup. "Just, dude, can you maybe hold your mornin consultation visits like _after_ ten a.m.?"

"--Of course! I’m so sorry, it _is_ early, I’m--"

"It’s all good. Go on, deal with shit, but do like Sol says and go find somethin interestin to do that don’t involve frettin over your douche of a roomie." Eridan flaps a hand gently at him. 

~

Half an hour later you’re out of the shower and doing your teeth by the bathroom window, which happens to look over the parking lot in the rear of the dorm. A tiny white Geo Metro has pulled up and what do you know, that’s Rose Lalonde leaning against it. Fuck, you’d pictured her as more the hearse type. Cute little hearse, like the one Harold builds out of the Jag E-type.

You watch, wondering what the fuck she’s doing over here in the morning, and are...not all that surprised to see a familiar white-blond head emerge from the first-floor doors. Dave Strider is wearing a dark-red hoodie and carrying a duffel bag and he does not look so shiningly hot as all that, you have got to admit. 

He makes his way over to Rose’s car and lets himself be hugged, and at this distance through the screen you can’t be sure but it looks like he’s sort of slumped against her, and then she ushers him round to the passenger side. 

She drives away without fanfare, and you think: hey, English, your life just got a shitload less annoying, you are the luckiest of weirdoes.

This is not your problem, however: your problem is the engineering of a decent bed for you and Eridan, and then tech crew, and then maybe you’ll go into town and pick up more supplies--you’re running low on reese’s cups, that is not to be borne. And then you have the afternoon free.

You grin a toothpasty grin.

~

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) began pestering timaeusTestified (TT) ! --

TT: So I said I’d keep you in the loop.  
TT: The loop has gotten somewhat tangled since that conversation.  
TT: One might even call it knotty.  
TT: Hello to you too, dear sister, I hope you’re doing well over at Batshit University, I’m well, thanks for asking.  
TT: What’s he done now?  
TT: Well.  
TT: He apparently confessed his romantic desires to Vantas in somewhat regrettable language, and compounded this by demanding of Vantas that he break off whatever odd relationship he’s currently got going with his bizarrely un-horrible juggalo roommate if he, Vantas, wanted a piece of Dave’s choice ass.  
TT: Wow.  
TT: Many a time I’ve thought: little bro, you are less smooth than you believe yourself to be. It’s no joy to be proved right.  
TT: I take it this didn’t go over so well.  
TT: You could say that.  
TT: Vantas said a lot of extremely inventive things and stormed out, if what I’m getting from Dave himself is to be believed, and it’s sort of difficult not to given the situation.  
TT: Dave called me early this morning and asked if he could come stay with me and Kanaya for a day or so, and he is currently sleeping the sleep of the utterly pathetic upstairs.  
TT: He was making noises about wanting to transfer to another school.  
TT: Did you give him the line about Striders never quitting?  
TT: What do you take me for?  
TT: He didn’t even rise to it. I’m going to haul him over to the health center if he’s no better by this afternoon.  
TT: Jesus.  
TT: I knew he was sick but that’s ridiculous.  
TT: I’ll start preparations for the ironic Viking funeral. You will be head mourneress. There will be torcs and torches and wailing.  
TT: And gnashing of teeth?  
TT: I would permit nothing less. Fuck, Lalonde, aren’t kids supposed to get this out of their systems in high school? Have the Brat Pack lied to me all these years?  
TT: O Strider, what a falling-off was there.  
TT: He did have that torrid bromance with the Egbert kid, you will recall.  
TT: Ah yes, I was forgetting.  
TT: With the glasses and the teeth.  
TT: That ended amicably, as I recall.  
TT: Alas. If only Dave had had his heart broken young you and I would be spared the necessity of all this worry and conversation.  
TT: Damn you, Egbert. You should have been more cruel.  
TT: Can we be unironic for a moment?  
TT: I think we may have to.  
TT: Does he have any friends at all? Other than you, I mean, and all the people he’s no doubt antagonized into weird hate-friendships by now. Anyone who can talk to him that he’d trust?  
TT: I fear not. I suppose Captor could try. Or his roommate, but I don’t know that his roommate’s really up to that just at the moment, poor unfortunate soul.   
TT: God damn it. Okay.  
TT: I am about to be a responsible adult. Curb your astonishment and quell your desire to swoon and pay attention.  
TT: First things first, get him feeling better, take him to the health center or a real doctor in town, whatever you need to do. Use the Amex if they don’t take our insurance. It’s shitty enough dealing with this when you’re not also physically miserable.  
TT: Second, maybe you better get your girlfriend to do this, it kind of requires a smidge of empathy.  
TT: I shall fetch her forthwith.  
TT: …  
TT: Sorry, she says she’s busy unpicking stitches. You will have to make do with me.  
TT: Fuck, Rose, you’re not makin’ this easy.  
TT: Second, you will have to _develop some fucking empathy_ and just talk to the kid. He’ll stonewall you up to a point, he’ll get angrier and angrier and say shittier and shittier things to you, and then pop, something in him will dislocate and you’ll get access to the next level, which is the one where he’s not being a dick for the sake of it and you can actually converse like rational individuals.  
TT: You speak as one who has experience.  
TT: I do.  
TT: Not risin’ to that one, ma belle soeur.  
TT: He probably already feels like a complete ass for saying that to his boycrush, so I’d avoid saying "hey, you acted like a jerk" unless it seems apposite.  
TT: But if you can, maybe extract from him what the fuck he thinks it is this Vantas has going with his deeply improbable roommate. You did say non-horrific and juggalo in the same sentence?  
TT: I did. I find it difficult to believe even as I type the words, but Makara is one of God’s own sweethearts and I think it’s somewhat understandable that Dave should feel he had romantic competition for the heart of the Vantas--but it isn’t like that.  
TT: What _is_ it like?  
TT: I speak as one who oughtn’t as I don’t know all the layers and nuances, but it strikes me as very much the sort of thing one reads about in books, two people being the closest of platonic and yet demonstrative friends. I don’t believe Makara and Vantas are banging one another, nor yet that they want to do so, and yet there’s very definitely something there. They are physically affectionate in a way you don’t often see outside of romantic relationships, but there does not seem to be a lust component.  
TT: Huh.  
TT: I guess I can see that, even if it does sound improbable.  
TT: But the kid’s not there yet?  
TT: The kid is so far off from there he’s racking up roaming charges.  
TT: This is a Tourneur situation, isn’t it.  
TT: Tourneur’s been debunked, it’s Middleton now. Or Webster, or even good old Shakespeare himself. Woe upon fucking woe and tragic errors accumulating like waxy yellow buildup of the soul.  
TT: That got away from you.  
TT: Thanks for pointing it out.  
TT: Anyway. I’ll do as you say, and I’ll let you know the outcome. If it goes horribly wrong it’s you paying for the therapy, after all.  
TT: Ah, there’s the mercenary Rosebud we know and fear.  
TT: Go to, go fucking to.  
TT: Dirk?  
TT: Mmm?  
TT: Thank you.

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) ceased pestering timaeusTestified (TT) ! --

~

"Hey," Rose says, sitting on the edge of her own bed, reaching out to feel his forehead. "Are you feeling any better?"

"...no."

"Right, then in that case haul yourself out of my expensive bedclothes, you’re going to the health center."

"... _no_."

"Dave, I will ring up Equius and make him carry you. Don’t think I won’t."

"Fuck, no, don’t do that." He pushes the covers away from his face and looks up at her. Without the shades he looks genuinely ill, fragile, _young_ , desperately unhappy. "I just...I don’t feel good and I want to sleep, okay, Rose?"

"When was the last time you kept anything down?"

"Yesterday sometime. Crackers."

"And do you feel as if you’ll be sick if you try anything now?"

He starts to say something and then just shakes his head. "I guess not. I’m not hungry, though."

"Then I will make you a bargain: you try eating some soup or something similarly inoffensive and if it stays put I won’t make you undergo any modern medicine."

"You suck, Rose."

"I suck very well. I have accolades to that effect."

"....oh my god ew."

"Really, I’m starting to worry about you, Dave. That was far too easy. --Dirk promises a full ironic Viking funeral in case you do succumb."

He blinks. "Wait, with like the burning ship and all?"

"And wailing and gnashing of teeth."

"Fuckin’ A," "he says, and shuts his eyes again, and she just relocates a lock of damp white-blonde hair and goes to see how Kanaya’s soup is doing. 

Kanaya had put him to bed in the first place when she’d brought him over from Gresley, being vastly more suited to the role than Rose herself, and has been fretting. Being able to feed Dave should go some way toward reassuring her of the rightness of the world.


	5. Chapter 5

"What's percale even mean?" 

You are in Target's bedding aisle, poking at plastic-wrapped sheet sets and wondering why thread count is apparently such a big deal. Eridan is looking Serious. (This makes you want to kiss him stupid right there in the middle of the store, but you're used to that reaction by now.)

"It's a kinda weave. Like, ok, this one here is sateen, it's smoother, shimmery, and these are percale. Never mind that, Sol, we gotta find the right _color_."

You sling an arm round his waist. "So we're not gonna go with bright purple polyester satin?"

" _I'm_ not the ironic one, that's Strider," he says, "please, gimme credit for at least a hint a taste. No. Egyptian cotton. Black or dark violet."

"Get both," you say. "Switch 'em out. Like the earrings, you know?"

He pauses, thinking, for a moment, and then does kiss you firmly. "You're fuckin brilliant. Okay, that takes care a the sheets, let's go look at curtains." Several sheet-set packages go into the shopping-cart.

"Our room will be the best-decorated little cinderblock cube in Gresley, dude, people will come and stare in awe. Behold, we even pick up the shit off the floor from time to time!"

" _I_ pick up the shit off the floor, you put it there in the first place. --Hmm. Do we need more water while we're here?" The morning ritual of making your coffee and his tea without having to slog all the way down to the drinking fountain has become rapidly indispensable. How anyone survives without that little stupid simple pleasure you do not understand. 

"Might as well. And I need more chocolate. And Monster." You've been easing off the energy drinks a bit lately, sticking with coffee instead; the chemical-sweetness gets to you more for some reason these days, but that shit is still the go-to beverage for your late-night coding binges. 

Eridan makes his standard Monster-face and ruffles your hair. "Okay. Anythin' else you can think that we need?"

Mostly what you're thinking of is putting the sheets to good use, but you can't quite get Strider out of your head: Eridan's mention of him had stirred the subject up again. On the whole it had probably been dumb of you both to get KK involved, but...dammit, it coulda been awesome. You think it's possible that it still could _be_ awesome, it's just...gonna take some more work. "--Earth to Sol," Eridan's saying. 

"Sorry. Uh. No, I guess not."

"What is it?"

You make a face. "Strider and KK. Guess we're not as expert at social engineering as we thought."

"Aw, Sol." Eridan stops the shopping-cart and puts his hands on your shoulders. "Yeah, it was probably a stupid idea on our part, but I think it woulda come out anyway sooner or later. Do you even know what really went down when Kar went to stop Strider hittin English with a sword? Not that I think he was really gonna. Just, like, wow, he really freaked out over that messin with his computer thing."

You follow this tangled series of statement and question with some effort. "--Oh. Uh, no, not exactly, just that he kind of grabbed Strider and was like dude quit being a flaming douchebag and put down the Kill Bill replica. I might ask him, later, if he's in any mood to talk."

"Yeah, do? It is supremely difficult meddlin without knowin all a the background information. One might even say counterproductive."

"I think Rose might disapprove of us trying to take over her schtick, dude."

"Nah, she's totally groomin me to be the official theater manipulator once she graduates. C'mon, let's get some Deer Park and your gross fizzy drinks and peanut butter cups, and go home."

Home, you think: it sounds nice. 

~

Your makeshift bed takes up most of the room, but God it's so stupidly nice to be able to flop beside him without either of you in danger of being squashed against the wall or tipped onto the floor. Both beds are the lower bunk, flipped over so the longer legs give you mad storage space underneath, and you and Eridan have lashed them together with hardcore rubber tiedowns so they won't move even under stress. As soon as he's made the bed up with your new purchases, you test the construction by throwing yourself down and rolling around like an idiot, or possibly a cat on ecstatic amounts of catnip. Eridan puts his hands on his hips and looks fussily down at you. He looks cute upside-down. That's not an easy feat. 

"Are you _tryin'_ to mess up my supreme fuckin' feat of engineerin? No, don't gimme the puppy eyes, Sol, you know I can't deal with the puppy eyes..."

You add a few more amps to the puppy eyes and are extremely smug when he gives up and flings himself down beside you and kisses you until your ears ring. 

 

Later--much later--you're sitting on the smoking balcony with a copy of your programming textbook, not really paying much attention to either it or your cigarette. You aren't surprised when a curly dark head appears over the railing and KK hauls himself into view. It's possible, although somewhat challenging, to get into Gresley without an ID card, and climbing up the AC unit beside the balcony is one of the favored routes. 

"Hey," you say. 

"Hey." Without really looking at you, he flops down on the ratty couch and lights up. "So you still interested in getting me on tech crew?"

"Depends, you still interested in being on it?" He's hiding behind his hair, but the awful tension isn't there in his shoulders. He gives a little nod. 

"I need something to be good at," he says, after a moment, and your chest _aches_.

"You _are_ good at shit, KK. You're all, like, into reading these long-ass books even when you don't have to for class. And you're straight-up awesome at taking care of people."

That makes him look up, and the dark-brown-red of his eyes is startling in the evening light. "I am?"

"You are. 'Member last semester when you and GZ took me to the hippie hut, with a picnic? Do you even know how much I needed that? It was, like. I was pretty sure everything about college was gonna suck, and wow, did my first experience of sharing a room with Eridan bear _that_ presupposition out, but you guys were my first friends here, and you didn't have to do that. You made me coffee out of the goodness of your heart, man."

He ducks his head, but you caught a glimpse of a smile. "Shut up, Captor. You don't do lyrical well."

"I was going for touching pathos, but whatever." 

"That too. Ah, fuck. I'd like to be good at that. You know? I was thinking about it. Like, what I was gonna do with the bio major. It's...okay, Captor, you gotta promise not to laugh."

"Promise."

"I was thinking like I might wanna look into nursing school after I graduate."

You don't even blink. "Uh-huh."

KK looks at you intensely through the hair. "Uh-huh what?"

"Sounds like a reasonable plan to me, dude. You'd make a great nurse, but you'd have to, like, learn how to not yell at asshole doctors. That might take practice."

He actually snickers. "Yeah, well, anger management courses might be smart, you have a point. But...I've been thinking about it a lot on and off, and kinda trying to convince myself it might not be the dumbest idea ever, but then part of me is like 'bullshit, Vantas, you'd flake out the second you had to do anything gross or involving blood' and....fuck, Captor, I don't even know. I'm _conflicted_."

"You're a college freshman. You're supposed to be conflicted."

"I'm doing a fantastic fucking job then. When English came and told me Dave was sick I didn't even think twice, I was like, ok, let's go deal with him."

KK isn't looking at you now, he's staring down at his hands, which are twisting round each other mindlessly. "He was a mess. I told English to go fill up his water bottle and then go find something else to do that wasn't hovering awkwardly or polishing his skulls, and he fucked off to the library or wherever. Strider wasn't as bad off as the Violet Prince--your description of that memorable night is probably never gonna leave me--but he was pretty miserable, I don't think he even really knew or cared who I was until he ran out of stuff to throw up and had attention to spare for anything other than the trash can."

You think: no, Vantas, you wouldn't flake out the second you had to do anything remotely gross. "Jesus. Poor guy."

"Yeah." KK's voice hardens slightly. "He was all like "oh shit it's you," and I said "you're welcome, asshole," and then he kind of...maybe broke down a bit and said a bunch of stuff."

Stuff you can imagine the general content and import of. You just nod.

"I'd never seen him like that, Captor. Like...without the shades on. Without the armor wrought of solid douchebag. His eyes are red, you know? Really honest-to-fuck red. I thought they were contacts, but they're not.

"He wasn't _Strider_ , he was just a kid. He was just Dave." KK lights another cigarette. His voice is rasping; you think he's probably on the second pack of the day. "It was different. Changed things. But then he apparently realized he'd been slipping and went back into Full Fuckhead Mode and pulled that "I want to have you to myself" bullshit. It's...I know I overreacted, but..."

"Something like that happened before?" you ask, quietly. He just nods. 

"High school. Guy was...well, he turned out to be wrong in the head, but I was the one who ended up thinking I was going batshit. Took me a long time before I got clear of that."

"If it's any help," you say, "I think Strider realizes he put his foot directly in his narrow little mouth. Doesn't mean it didn't hurt. I'm sorry, man."

"Yeah." KK flicks the cigarette half-smoked off the balcony. "Doesn't matter."

"He's over at his sister's place right now, I think. You don't have to worry about running into him in the halls or whatever."

He looks over at you, and again you catch the glint of his eyes. "Me and Gamzee, it's not like..."

You hold up your hand. "Not my business, dude. You and GZ are whatever you guys are, you both rock."

"I know we do," he says with a touch of irritation. "Me and him are like...best friends, okay? We hit it off at once, which was weird, I didn't expect to like my roomie, let alone rely on him to chill me out and keep me sane and balanced and stuff."

"You do the same for him," you say, and it isn't a question. "I remember how protective you were."

"He's like...he hasn't got the sharp edges to bounce shit off. Everything affects him, he cares about everything. Legitimately cares. And I'm all sharp edges."

You look at your friend, head tilted on one side. "Yeah, but you care too."

"We balance." He shrugs. "I need him. I think he needs me, or something like me, anyhow."

"I think he does." 

There's companionable silence for a little while. "Captor?"

"Yup."

"Thanks, man. Uh. Not like you really volunteered to be Mister Listening Ear or anything but...I kinda needed to say all that shit."

"You sure as hell did. C'mon, come check out my room, we have totally tricked it out like a freaky goth bordello. The skull really makes it, you know? Lends a tone to the room."

KK punches you gently in the arm. "Fuck you, man, freaky goth bordello is so last month. You got any Doritos?"

"As it just so happens."

~

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) began pestering timaeusTestified (TT) ! --

TT: You weren't kidding.  
TT: I rarely kid. What happened?  
TT: Well, he threw up all over my bed in the middle of the night, to start with, and this morning he was a little better but about as forthcoming as a rock.  
TT: Thank you for the detail, it makes my mental image so excitingly vivid. I told you he'd sulk.  
TT: You did, you did. I persevered, though, but I tell you I was thisclose to losing all the rags and tatters of my storied patience by the time he snapped. And he snapped, Dirk.  
TT: I assume he's all right, or you wouldn't be pestering me, you'd deign to actually place a voice call. And I haven't heard from Rox, so clearly this is not a crisis of truly epic proportions.  
TT: You are so refreshingly free from the constraints of gentlemanly tact. No, he survived, and so did my living room.  
TT: ...Are _you_ okay?  
TT: There are reasons I prefer to converse via text message rather than voice or video chat. I'll be fine.  
TT: You are beginning to concern me, baby sis.  
TT: I'm flattered.  
TT: He had hysterics all over my Bauhaus shirt. I've...never seen him like that, not since we were very little. I think it's partly the virus knocking out his general defenses, but my God, Dirk. Everything came out. He's been miserable for a while now.  
TT: I rather thought as much. God damn it, do I need to come up there?  
TT: I don't believe so. Once the initial dam-burst had subsided he regained at least a little of his equanimity and was able to make terrible jokes at his own expense, but he's still in a somewhat delicate state and I bloody well wish I could terminate the ongoing soap opera that is this campus before I have to spend any more money on dry cleaning. If it were up to me I'd send an emissary over to Vantas and have them repeat what Dave said to me, and stand back, but frankly I don't know if I have the courage to meddle further.  
TT: How is he? I mean, physically.  
TT: Kanaya took him into town, to the clinic. The health center's closed Friday afternoons. He seems a little better but I wanted someone to look at him properly.  
TT: Me too. Okay, listen up, Rosebud. Your idea of an emissary has merit. Your pair of hilarious protegés who started this whole clusterfuck can make themselves useful and go check on the emotional weather chez Vantas. Based on that report, you can decide whether or not to suggest to Dave that he write an I-fucked-up letter. At that point, it's out of your delicate little hands and frankly none of your business, difficult as that may be to read.  
TT: Not difficult at all.  
TT: Now you're really worryin' me.  
TT: I'm extremely tired of being caught in the middle of other people's emotional hurricanes. I used to enjoy it, and now I can't imagine why. I guess this is growing up.  
TT: Everybody's gone and you've been there for too long to face this on your own?  
TT:...Up yours, dear brother, and thank you for making me laugh.  
TT: Love you.  
TT: <3

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) ceased pestering timaeusTestified (TT) ! --


	6. Chapter 6

You wake out of a totally unintentional nap to find your laptop has slithered off your lap and gone to sleep, emulating your example, and your phone is buzzing with repeated texts. 

Bluh. Eridan had gone off to meet with his advisor or check something on the bulletin boards, you're not even sure, and you'd settled down on your side of the magic bed to get some work done and promptly fallen asleep like a total dorkface. You unlock the phone and have a look. 

Shit. 

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) began pestering twinArmageddons (TA) ! --

TT: Sollux.   
TT: Sollux Captor, I need you.  
TT: I wonder if you have any idea how many male individuals would commit gross bodily harm in order to have me say that to them.  
TT: I need you desperately and right the hell now.  
TT: Unless of course you are in the middle of what would probably best be euphemized as connubial activity.  
TT: That would be a sufficient excuse for failing to answer my messages.  
TA: holy 2hiit, ro2e, calm down.  
TA: ii am well aware of how fuckiing iincrediible iit ii2 for _me_ two 2ay that two _you_.  
TA: who2e throat mu2t ii cut?  
TT: ...Good heavens, Webster? I'm impressed.  
TA: eriidan wa2 hopiing two play ferdiinand iif medeou2 deciide2 two 2tage _Duche22_ thii2 fall, he made me read iit, what ii2 iit that you wanted?  
TT: Well, Bosola, we've had something of a breakthrough on the Strider front over on this side of campus. I need to know in what quarter lies the emotional wind on your end. Is Vantas remotely within sight of a mood in which he might receive a letter from Dave without just throwing it away unopened?  
TA: funny you 2hould a2k.  
TA: ii thiink he miight well be. ii 2poke two hiim ye2terday eveniing. he 2eem2 two be over the iimmediiate oh hell2 no re2pon2e.  
TT: You reassure me deeply. Okay. When Dave gets back from the clinic, if he's in any shape to do so, I'll suggest he write Vantas to apologize. Would you or Eridan be willing to play messenger?  
TA: ii thiink iit'2 the lea2t we can do, after our iiniitiial meddliing 2tarted thii2 whole clu2terfuck off.  
TT: You have my deep gratitude. And that of Kanaya.  
TA: ii'm goiing two 2ave that up for when ii mo2t need iit, you know. call me when you need me two come over.

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) ceased pestering twinArmageddons (TA) ! --

~

Eridan cooks that evening. You're learning, slowly, sort of by a process of diffusion; you've begun to pick up when stuff needs to be stirred and how much of this and that to add at which stage. Both of you know better than to try anything as ridiculously ambitious as making your own pasta, given the kitchen equipment at hand, but boring old linguine from Safeway are good enough once you toss them with Eridan's fresh pesto. By the time you set everything to soak and carry your plates back up to your room, half the other freshmen are gathered around with big envious eyes, lured by the scents. 

You tell him about Rose's request, and he grins happily. "Good. I was hopin for that. Just as long as Strider doesn't do anythin else astonishingly stupid this might still turn out for the best."

"Exactly." You don't say: when you go over there to pick up the missive, you want to have a word with Strider himself. Over the past few days you've developed a sort of cross sympathy with the douchebag, which you had never expected to do; maybe it dates back to when he broke the news to you that Rose was not, in fact, dating Eridan. Maybe it's how goddamn wrecked he'd looked and how obviously he doesn't know how to deal with people. 

"You're thinkin things," Eridan says, over a forkful of pasta. 

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. Deep plots within plots, man. Shit is some serious intrigue."

He throws an olive at you, and then you have to finish eating in a hurry because that insufferable smirk on his face needs to be kissed away. Hard. 

English knocks in the middle of the subsequent makeout session and you and Eridan sigh identical irritated sighs and disengage, mollified in the knowledge that you have the whole night, and every night, to spend together in this bed. You rearrange your clothing and go to crack open the door. "Yeah?"

"Am I disturbing you fellows?"

You squash a sarcastic reply. "Not hugely. What's up?"

"It's....er....I'm not even quite sure how to explain...there's...ah, somebody attempting to contact me? Through the computer? And I don't know her?"

You facepalm and let English in. Eridan is lying in bed with his hands laced behind his head, looking amused. "Did you sign up for OKCupid or something and not realize it?"

"I don't believe so!" English is red in the face and in actual, evident distress, and you wonder who the female is. "She knows my name."

"Your actual name?"

"The only one I have!"

"Okay," says Eridan, "walk it back down, English. Tell it from the beginning. Sol, can you--"

"Already on it," you say, going to fill a mug with water to make English something restorative. He flops into the desk chair you pull out for him. 

"It's silly," he says. "But I was uploading an essay to Sakai--I don't know why they switched from Blackboard, I liked Blackboard, it was easy--and all of a sudden a Skype window pops up and I wasn't even signed in! At least I didn't think I was."

You are beginning to have a nasty feeling in the pit of your stomach. You stir sugar into the spiked coffee and hand it to English. "Drink up."

He takes it with a nod of thanks and half-chokes on an injudicious gulp, but the liquor and the heat do seem to steady him a bit. "Ahem. Um. And the, ah, the person in the window is a blonde lady I've never seen before in my life, who knows my name and asks me about guns!"

"Some guys," Eridan drawls, "would take that as a wish-fulfillment fantasy gone to magnificent lengths. What was this lady's name?"

"I didn't quite catch it," he admits, and takes another gulp. "Something like Roxanne?"

"Is she still online?"

"I don't know! I dashed out of there in a considerable hurry!"

Goddamn, this kid is going to be the oldest virgin in the history of ever. You sigh. "Lemme come have a look. I might be able to figure out how she got into your machine."

"Don't forget me, I need to see this for myself." Eridan slips out of bed and puts on his stolen black kimono, because although he's still wearing pants Eridan would no more go out in the hallway bare-chested than he would without hair glop. English doesn't look convinced, but he lets the pair of you usher him back to the room he normally shares with Dave Strider. 

You are immediately struck by the resemblance, although this woman is so unlike Rose as to be her polar opposite. The bone structure is there, though, and the pale hair is the same, although it's longer and styled in a retro flip. Her eyes, however, are...

Oh for fuck's sake. Where do you even get hot pink contacts, and no you are not even going to entertain the idea that those are real. The makeup is just as bright and just as garish. She leans off camera for a moment and comes back with a glass of something, and you think you could do with one yourself. 

"Hey hey hey," she says, grinning at the three of you. "Tall dark and handsome there's gotta be Eridan, amiright? Prince in purple. And that makes _you_ \--" she turns those ridiculous eyes in your direction--"Sollux."

"Who the hell are you?" you inquire.

"Din't she tell you 'bout me? That's _just like_ my little sister. I wanna talk to you, Sollux, but I _was_ having a conversation with Mr. English here 'bout the superiority of the M-1 carbine over the M-1 Garand, if you guys don't mind." She takes a sip. "He's totally wrong, of course."

Jake English is staring at the screen with the expression of a poleaxed steer. You look from him to the mysterious stranger and back again, and over at Eridan. "I think that was our cue to leave," the latter says drily. "Good night, Miss...?"

"Roxy," she says, with a blinding smile. "Roxy Lalonde."

 

~

 

"Roxy bloody Lalonde," says Rose the next morning, head in hands. "I am going to murder Dirk. I am going to murder him carefully and slowly over a very long period of time. The last thing this mess needs is the introduction of my elder sister." She pauses, looks up. "No, okay, direct impact of a thermonuclear device is the absolute last thing this mess needs, but Roxy Lalonde runs it a close second."

"She's...kinda overwhelmin," says Eridan, tentatively. "Not that that's a bad thing, a course!" You'd both gone over to her house in response to her text just after breakfast, and shared the tale of English's unexpected conversation partner. 

Rose laughs a mirthless laugh. You've never actually heard one before, but that is totally a mirthless laugh. "God-a-mercy, old heart, thou speakest cheerfully. You have no idea how overwhelming it is possible for her to be. Roxy is capable of singlehandedly bending an entire company's board of trustees to her will, which is why she gets to work at home not wearing any underpants and probably typing extremely fast on a computer with far too many monitors, doing cybersecurity consulting of some sort."

Your brain had short-circuited somewhere around "underpants," and it takes you a few moments to start paying attention again. "Um. Seriously?"

"I am in deadly earnest." Rose lights a cigarette. "Damn. I'd hoped to get this over with before she winkled it out of Dirk, but Roxy can winkle like anything."

"Two things." Eridan ticks them off on his fingers. "One, who's Dirk, and two, what exactly does your...kind a crazy but awesome big sis want with English?"

"Dirk," says Rose, and blows a sharp plume of smoke, "is my elder brother, and unbearable. Would you care to hazard a guess as to what color _his_ eyes are?"

"...Roxy's are not real. Come on, Rose. Nobody has..."

You live in Gresley. You trail off and sigh. "No. Rainbow sparkles?"

"Orange." She closes her own wearily. "Bright...tangerine...orange. He has a twisty suspicious brain, though, and he's been of use to me before when I required assistance, and I had...told him about this whole mess with Dave. I should have known it was only a matter of time before Roxy got it out of him. What does she want? I've no idea. She finds the world a source of unending entertainment. I'd rather like to get this situation under control before she takes it into her head to come down here and flirt with English in person; his head might explode."

"He does kinda need a girlfriend," you point out, and get an iced violet _look_ for your pains. "Sorry, sorry. Just...he's really into guns and skulls and not a whole hell of a lot else. Oh, and adventure stories. He digs adventure stories."

"Sollux, you are dear to my heart but just at the moment I cannot think of anything I have less interest in than Jake English's likes and dislikes. Let us get on with the work at hand."

Eridan has gotten up and bustled around while you discussed English: now he places a glass in Rose's limp hand and pats her shoulder. "Drink up, an let's get goin, sooner we get this over with the better."

She opens her eyes and smiles at him. "You're a gem, Eridan."

"I know," says your beloved with a cloudless smile. 

~

Strider is apparently still confined to bed upstairs and not receiving visitors, and you wonder how much of that is illness and how much of it is simple desire to hide. Either way, you kind of want to bang on the door anyway, possibly threatening to draw large hairy dicks on it, and go in to tell him to snap the fuck out of his fugue and get on with his life before he turns into a Lifetime Television Special. 

Nah. You've meddled enough. You give the stairs a last thoughtful look and take the envelope Rose offers you, tucking it securely into your pocket. "I'll let you know when it's been delivered," you tell her. Eridan kisses her hand, which goes some way toward restoring her good humor, and you step out into the breeze. It's one of those days you think of as the distillation of spring: puffy clouds are scudding across the sky drawing their shadows behind them, the Bradford pear blossoms are mostly over but their drifts of sugar-white petals still catch in the wind and scatter the grass with warm snow. The daffodils are going strong, and that makes you think of your place by the waterfall, and how much you'd like to take Eridan there this afternoon, savor the beauty while it's there. 

He has pear-blossom petals in his hair, glimmering white, and you twine your fingers with his. When he looks over at you, you're smiling helplessly, and his eyes widen slightly before an answering smile spreads across his face. On a day like this it is almost impossible to imagine _not_ being in love, which is a dumb thought and you're aware of it being dumb even as it registers in your head--but it's also one that rings true. 

You're hoping so hard that this will turn out to be okay. 

 

~

 

Karkat is expressionless when you hand him the envelope. You try to think of something to say, such as "I'm not on his side, man," but even you can recognize a truly stupid idea when one comes to you. These days it seems like you're getting better at that. 

"Thanks," he says, and shuts the door. You stare at the whiteboard with its Gamzee-doodles for a moment or two before about-facing and marching back to your own room. 

\-- twinArmageddons (TA) began pestering tentacleTherapist (TT) ! --

TA: fiield operatiive captor reportiing  
TA: the eagle ha2 landed, repeat, the eagle ha2 landed.  
TT: Pfff. You're far too young to know that one.  
TA: 2o are you. be2iide2, one of my dad2 ii2 way iintwo 2hiitty world war two thriiller2. ii am currently hiidiing iin a normandy chateau controlled by the re2ii2tance.  
TT: Sometimes I'm really _awfully_ fond of you, Sollux. Do send a code message to HQ in case signs of mobilization are detected.  
TA: receiived and under2tood. captor out.

\-- twinArmageddons (TA) ceased pestering tentacleTherapist (TT) ! --

The next hour is spent alternately trying to read an argument on one of your Minecraft forums and leaning over to the half-open door in case the sound you heard was Karkat emerging from his room. Eridan is trying to read a script, but he's not doing much better than you are. It doesn't help that both of you are aware of how silly this whole situation is, at heart: it's the sort of thing you all ought to've gotten out of your systems in high school. Oddly enough, all of you seem to be messed up enough not to have had the classic perfect American high school experience of romance, social gatherings, and the kind of difficulties teenagers in books always somehow overcome by page 250. You kind of hate those books. 

When he finally does come out you almost miss it completely: in fact, he has to stop outside your room and bang on the door, which pushes it open. You turn to stare. 

He looks...okay. Maybe a bit suspiciously bright-eyed, but you've all had allergies. The thrumming tension isn't there in his shoulders, under the vast hoodie; he looks determined, but not miserable.

"Okay, assholes," he says, and clears his throat. "Gimme directions to Lalonde's townhouse. I need to tell Strider he's a douchebag in person. With details. Possibly a bullet-pointed list."

You and Eridan share a look, and you can't help smiling when you turn back to Karkat. "It's Alleyn-Andrewes number five, across the quad from the arts building. Rose said he didn't want to see anybody. He's still in bed. But you might get through the blockade if you ask really nicely."

"I don't intend to ask really nicely, I intend to have a...seriously? Still?"

"She didn't seem overly concerned," you tell him. "He's probably just hidi... _rest_ ing." The shoulders square again in determination.

"...I intend to have a meaningful talk with him in which I bring up a number of points I feel require clarification and possibly further debate. That is what I intend to do."

You try to keep your face straight, and mostly manage. "Cool, man."

"Fucking right." He scowls up at you, and then at Eridan, and slams the door behind him. 

Eridan doesn't take his eyes off you as he very deliberately puts a finger to his lips, licks it, and draws an invisible line on the air; and then he squeaks as you shut your computer and fling yourself down on the bed and wrap him up in a thoroughly triumphant embrace. You only just remember to text Rose. 

 

TA: iincomiing  
TA: ii thiink the 2torm ii2 goiing two 2ub2iide.  
TT: I'd say 'praisèd be God, and not our strength, for it,' but I think in this case the role of God was understudied by pure blind luck.  
TT: I'll let you know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rose sticks chunks of _Henry V_ into conversation at all opportunities, because Rose is--no matter what she herself would like to think--still very young.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now illustrated by givenclarity!

Evening is drawing in by the time you and Eridan are woken from a thoroughly lazy and wonderful snooze. Both of you have pillow wrinkle marks on your faces, and his hair is sticking up at an extremely risible angle. (The purple lock is still just as lovely and stupid as ever, even vertical.)

Someone is texting you. Your phone has vibrated almost all the way off the nightstand, and you catch it before it plunges over the edge, unlocking it to see a wall of allcaps grey text. Excitement--and, okay, apprehension--flickers through you, and you sit up against the mound of pillows, ignoring Eridan's murmured protestations. 

\-- carcinoGeneticist (CG) began pestering twinArmageddons (TA) !--

CG: CAPTOR.  
CG: CAPTOR, I GATHER I HAVE YOU AND AMPORA TO NOT THANK FOR HALF THIS HYPERDRAMATIC PUERILE EMOTIONAL BULLSHIT.  
CG: SO LET ME LAY THIS OUT FOR YOU:  
CG: IF YOU EVER.  
CG: EVER.  
CG: EVER.  
CG: TRY TO PLAY SWEET VALLEY HIGH LEVEL MATCHMAKING FUCKTARD GAMES WITH ME OR ANYBODY I KNOW  
CG: EVER AGAIN.  
CG: I WILL UNSCREW YOUR GOD DAMN HEADS AND POUR SOMETHING INCREDIBLY NASTY DOWN THE HOLE.  
CG: WE CLEAR ON THIS POINT?

Shit. 

TA: a2 cry2tal  
CG: THAT SAID.  
CG: UH.  
CG: THANKS.  
TA: huh?  
CG: OBSERVE.

carcinoGeneticist (CG) has sent image lookitsanironicselfie.jpg

CG: I AM GOING TO HAVE TO HIT HIM OVER THE HEAD WITH A DICTIONARY UNTIL HE LEARNS THE REAL MEANING OF IRONIC.  
CG: NEVERTHELESS.  
TA: kk ii2 thii2 actually a piicture of you and 2triider not tryiing two kiill one another  
CG: NO, YOU IMBECILE. IT'S A PICTURE OF ME PINNED AGAINST ROSE LALONDE'S FUCKING PILLOWS--WOMAN HAS MORE OF THEM THAN YOU DO, WHAT THE HELL--WITH STRIDER CURLED UP IN A TOUCHINGLY VULNERABLE ATTITUDE AGAINST ME. NOTICE THE NO SHADES.  
TA: ii'm 2howiing thii2 two eriidan. kk diid you know you were capable of adorable?  
CG: OF FUCKING COURSE I DID. I'M CAPABLE OF ANYTHING. IN THIS CASE I WOULD CLARIFY THAT IT IS ADORABLOODTHIRSTY.   
TA: iin all 2eriiou2ne22, are you okay?  
TA: ii really am 2orry for fuckiing wiith you guy2'2 liive2 and 2hiit.   
CG: HOLY FUCK, CAPTOR, WAS THAT A RAY OF MATURE SELF-AWARENESS IN THE MURKY DIMNESS OF YOUR BIFURCATED BRAIN?  
TA: oh, fuck you two.  
CG: NO THANKS.  
CG: AND TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION. YEAH. I THINK SO. IT'S...STILL KINDA INCREDIBLE TO ME.  
TA: what happened??  
CG: I'LL TELL YOU LATER.  
TA: when later?  
CG: LATER. G2G.   
TA: gdii kk you can't ju2t leave iit liike that  
CG: WHOOPS, LOOK AT THAT, I JUST DID. 

\-- carcinoGeneticist (CG) ceased pestering twinArmageddons (TA) !--

 

He signs off. You have been ignoring Eridan's repeated murmurs and jabs at your ribs, and now lean over to fuck up his hair further. "I think it's gonna be okay," you tell him. 

"Mmmph. Who was that?"

"Karkat." Without another word you hand over the phone, and watch his expression change as he scrolls through the conversation. He almost chokes at the picture, and turns enormous purple eyes on you, and you're both so damn happy and so relieved that neither of you have to say a thing out loud. 

You order celebratory Chinese, and encounter Jake English as you go down to collect it from the delivery guy. English looks as if he hasn't slept much, but there's a sort of fervent intensity in his eyes that you don't remember seeing there before. "Hey."

"Oh, hello, Captor! A magnificent feast you have there!"

You'd probably ordered more than you and Eridan can actually manage between you, and a small access of neighborliness makes you ask if he wants to come have an egg roll or whatever. Mostly you're curious about how he and the elder Lalonde had gotten along, based on your interesting conversation with Rose this morning. He grins a sparkling grin and thumps you on the back, which makes you stagger slightly. "Damned generous of you! I accept with pleasure."

Eridan is slightly less chuffed to see him, but spreads out the food on your actual plates (black, made out of actual china, $15/set, Target) with a good enough attitude. "How's tricks, English?" he inquires.

"Well, I hardly dare comment, chaps!" He sits crosslegged on your desk chair and accepts a plate and chopsticks. "In fact, I've been pinching myself to make sure I'm not dreaming. I don't mind telling you it's been the oddest night and day I've had since I started here!"

You and Eridan share a raised eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Miss Lalonde is a remarkable conversationalist," he says, and you can both hear Rose's heartfelt groan in your heads. "A trifle fond of the sauce, perhaps, but none of us are without our vices! I couldn't make head or tail of all the things she knows about computers, I'm sure you and she would get on like a house on fire, Captor, all those packets and bytes and trojan horses and suchlike." English makes a comically puzzled face, and then laughs at himself. "Never been much of a thinker, myself, but gosh, I do know firearms, and Miss Lalonde...well, I'll just say I've never met a female so knowledgeable about armament!"

Which of you is going to have to burst his bubble, you wonder, and eat chicken-with-broccoli to put off the inevitable. _English, she's way older than you and also probably just flirting with you for the lulz_ , you don't say. 

"Point a interest," Eridan says, gesturing with his chopsticks, "girls tend to not like it when you refer to em as 'females.' I just mention it in passin."

"Aha! See, I'm a complete tyro in the lists of love, I'd have put my foot in my mouth and not even realized it." He scarfs down fried rice. "I'm dashed lucky to have the advice of such worldly-wise friends. I'm to have another Skype call with her in half an hour!"

"Did you seriously just say 'lists of love'," English?" 

"I absolutely did!" He beams.

You look down at your plate for a moment before deciding there really is absolutely no appropriate response to that whatsoever. 

~

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) began pestering timaeusTestified (TT) !--

TT: L'orage est passé.  
TT: Although I am going to murder you. I want to make that abundantly clear.  
TT: Jake English may be an inexplicable bucktoothed anachronism, but he doesn't deserve Roxy Roxying all over him. Did you really, honestly, actually have to tell her about this?  
TT: You wound me to the quick, Rosebud.  
TT: I'm pressing my hand to my pierced heart right now. Nobly.  
TT: In point of fact I said nothing whatsoever to Roxy. You of all people should know she probably keeps tabs on the lot of us as a matter of course.  
TT: She's bothering Dave's roomie?  
TT: The skull enthusiast?  
TT: The same. Captor says he's head-over-bootheels.   
TT: I expect he'll get over it.  
TT: Mmh. It seems unnecessarily cruel.  
TT: The course of true love never did run smooth.  
TT: See how annoying it is when people inject lines of poetry or drama into conversation for no good reason? This is what we like to call an object lesson, dearest sister.  
TT: Visible effort, Dirk. Visible effort. Detracts from the effect.  
TT: Regardless, I think the whole mess is finally drawing to a close. Vantas came over this afternoon and talked to Dave, and they appear to have made it up and are now engaging in awkward snuggles of the sort that make everybody who isn't them cringe. Dave's staying here tonight, but after that things ought to go back to normal.  
TT: I don't know about that.  
TT: ...Don't be ominous, it's annoying. What do you mean, you don't know about that.  
TT: Oh. Oh no.  
TT: Jesus Christ, no. Dirk.   
TT: Don't say you're coming to visit.  
TT: I won't.  
TT: How can I say I am coming to visit...  
TT: No. Please no.   
TT: ...When I am already here?  
TT: ...  
TT: Why.  
TT: Because I was worried, you little twit. Not just about Dave, about all of you. We seem to be adept at gettin' ourselves into the most farcical goddamn situations.  
TT: I'm staying locally; I'll be there tomorrow.  
TG: heeeeey distri :))  
TG: baby sis givin u a hrad time  
TG: *hard  
TG: lollerskates that sounds bad  
TT: Roxy, what do you want?  
TT: I'm not even going to ask how you got into a private pesterlog chat without being invited.  
TG: shenanigans of course :3 :3 :3  
TG: ;) and i want a billion bucks and a solid gold mothafuckin bidet  
TG: but ill settle for knowin where distri plnas 2 rest his sickass anime shadez tonite  
TG: cause a girl cant get a decent nigths sleep in the back of this here ferrari  
TT: *facepalm* Where are you, Rox?  
TG: still at home  
TG: just got done skypin that adoraderpy skull dude ;)  
TG: if i leave now i should get 2 ithaca in like 5 hrs  
TG: lol ithaca   
TG: does taht dude oxysseus teach at cornell or what  
TT: Yes, nobody in the history of ever has made that joke before.  
TT: Give me a call when you get in. I've got a motel room overlooking the lake; you can share if you promise not to hurl on the sheets.   
TG: rofl i promise   
TG: be good 2 see u two and davey  
TG: poor little kid :(  
TT: Poor little kid, nothin'.   
TG: awww he's just bein a dumbass cause hes in luuuuurve  
TG: ok strilondes, rolal out, peace!  
TT: Drive safe.  
TT: I'd better get off the internet and start preparing for Team Strilonde's invasion. I want you to know that I hate you both a great deal.   
TT: Yes, yes. Taken as read.  
TG: Dirk?  
TG: Thanks.  
TT: You're welcome, you little purple-eyed ingrate. I'll bring Kanaya a present for putting up with you.  
TT: <3

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) ceased pestering timaeusTestified (TT) !--

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) began pestering twinArmageddons (TA) !--

TT: Sollux.  
TT: Tell Eridan to batten down the hatches over there. And warn English.  
TT: We're about to feel the power of the fully armed and operational Strilonde elder siblings.  
TA: waiit, what?  
TT: Dirk and Roxy are coming to visit. Tomorrow. I only just found out myself.  
TA: oh fuck.  
TA: ii'm terriifiied of your 2ii2ter, lalonde.  
TT: Frankly, so am I, a little. But I suppose they've been worried about Dave.  
TA: ii can't blame them for that. kiid'2 been a me22.  
TT: Well, quite.  
TT: Vantas does seem to have...had a calming effect on him. By the time he left, Dave was actually demanding food.  
TA: kk ii2 magiic, pa22 iit on  
TA: ok ii'll warn the other2. niight, ro2e.  
TT: Good night to you both.

\-- tentacleTherapist (TT) ceased pestering twinArmageddons (TA) !--


	8. Chapter 8

You are still mostly asleep when some girl in the hallway calls out "Yoo-hoo!" the way people don't actually ever do in real life, and you blink and prop yourself up on your elbows and tilt your head, listening. She doesn't sound like any of the girls you know in this building. "Mister English?"

Eridan says something like "wstfgl" and rolls over, and you elbow him in the ribs. "Hey," you say. "I have a really weird feeling something's about to happen."

"Coffee needs to happen," he says, muffled in the pillows. "Executive order. Make't so."

"Yeah, in a minute." You slide out of bed, pushing back the gauze curtains, and go to stare out the door's peephole. "...Holy shit."

"Holy shit what?"

"Holy _shit_."

They're tall and pale and platinum-blonde and on the whole they make you think of a latter-day punk-preppy Titania and Oberon, which is not something you would have thought in your pre-Eridan days. She has enormous sunglasses on, and is wearing a purple off-the-shoulder dress that stops quite a long way up her thighs. He also has on shades, but in his case they're...tilted anime triangles, the ends of which protrude from under a bright orange baseball cap. And he has his collar popped. And...oh, God...he's wearing biker's fingerless gloves. Dave, walking between them, is as expressionless and stoic as you've ever seen him, a full head shorter than the man and woman flanking him, and completely without their air of impressive oddness. 

Eridan nudges you aside, still warm with sleep, and stares for himself. "Holy shit."

You watch as Jake English opens his door and as his jaw drops in an authentic expression of wide-eyed bogglement. Oh, right. You were supposed to warn him they were coming. You kind of failed to follow through on that little not insignificant detail.

The woman in purple takes off her starlet sunglasses and _beams_ at him, an expression you can almost feel all the way over here--and offers him her hand. She's taller than you'd thought, seeing her on his Skype window. "Hi, Jake! Wow, you look even better in real life!"

English looks as if someone has just clobbered him with a sock full of sand. And then amazingly he does the exact right thing, so perfect you'd think it had to be scripted; he takes her long-nailed hand in his brown one, brings it to his lips, and bestows the lightest and most chivalrous of kisses. 

Roxy Lalonde squeals. 

~

The two of you stay in your room until the drama seems to have died down some; Strider had gone off presumably to hide in KK's room, you don't want to know what's happening chez English, and the tall dude in the hat and anime shades has vanished. 

(You pass the time very pleasantly. It really is a very comfortable bed, compared to trying to wrap around one another on a narrow little twin frame. What a good idea of yours it was.)

Eventually, though, you do bother to get dressed and pad down to the balcony for a smoke while Eridan showers and prepares for the theater club meeting scheduled for midday. It's that perfect spring day where the sun is warm but there's enough breeze to make it comfortable; all the trees have finished flowering and are dusted with the soft deep-green fuzz of new leaves. The azalea bushes round the church across the parking lot are in bright scarlet bloom. 

"You must be Captor," somebody drawls behind you, and you jump a foot in the air and whirl around to find Anime Shades leaning against the doorway with his arms folded. 

"Jesus Christ," you say. 

"Dirk Strider. A common mistake; I won't hold it against you."

You groan and drop into one of the armchairs. "Your little bro did that line better when I met him. What, uh. What do you want?"

"I've heard so much about you," he says. "Wanted to catch up in person. Mind if I sit?"

"'S a free balcony." You chain another cigarette. "What do you mean, heard so much about me?"

"My baby sister IMs like she talks: at great and decorative length." Dirk Strider bestows his posterior on a battered sofa. "She's been consulting me for advice on how to deal with Dave. Believe it or not, this is the first time he's ever done anything like this."

You wish you had shades on. God damn it. If Rose was pestering her brother for help, then she'd probably told him the whole story of how you and Eridan had schemed to get Strider and Vantas together. It would be sort of nice if the balcony collapsed, you think disjointedly. Right about now.

Whereupon he leans forward and reaches up to take off the ridiculous eyewear and fixes you with a direct, not unkind gaze exactly the color of tangerines. "Rose is very fond of you," he says. You can just about see fine sprays of tiny wrinkles fanning out from the corners of those improbable eyes; he isn't as young as you'd first thought. "And Dave, now that he's removed his head from his ass, is grateful for your service as a courier. However--"

"You don't have to say it," you forestall him. "I know, I know, Eridan and I never should have gotten involved in the first place, it was a profoundly dumbass thing to do."

"Yup." He doesn't seem all that ticked off, actually. "But there's one thing I'm dyin' to know."

Sigh. "What is it?"

"What the fuck was the deal with the squirrels?"

You are surprised into snickering. "Oh, fuck, you mean Lalonde didn't describe that entire scene word for word, maybe with camera angles? I can still barely believe that's even a thing that happened."

"You're killin' me here, kid." He leans back against the couch. Under the silly hat his hair appears to have been set in Final Fantasy spikes. You wonder how much of it is irony and how much sincere; dressing yourself up as a walking caricature requires the kind of devotion to detail you personally could never manage to summon up. "Spill."

"Okay, here's how it went," you say, assuming a didactic tone, and tell him about the squirrel incident, in detail, down to where Dave Strider had gotten the boombox to play _In Your Eyes_ (scene shop, and Zahhak had had words to say about that when he'd found out). His poker face is better than his little brother's, but you see a flicker in his weird orange eyes when you get to the part about Vantas flailing in apoplectic wordless rage and pelting Strider with anything to hand, up to and including a couple of incautious squirrels. 

When you're done he tilts his head on one side, considering. "I take back any disparaging remarks I may have made about Batshit University. Clearly the skills you're learning here will stand you in excellent fuckin' stead out in the real world."

"I figure if we can get through this kind of clusterfuck we can learn how to balance a checkbook and pay rent and stuff," you agree. "There's classes, too, of course. It's not all fucked-up soap opera scheming. And sometimes there's, like, actual projects that get done."

"Glad to hear it," says Dirk, and flashes you a grin so brief you're not sure if you actually saw it at all. "You got time to introduce me to Rosebud's protegé?"

You blink for a moment, then work it out. "Oh! Um. He's got a club meeting at noon but they never start on time, he's probably still in the room doing his hair."

"Definitely a theater child," he says, putting the shades back on. "I should probably go rescue young Master English from my sister, but I'd like to meet Ampora."

You wonder what Eridan will make of those eyes and that hair.

- twinArmageddons (TA) began pestering carcinoGeneticist (CG)! -

TA: kk  
TA: kk help.  
TA: my boyfriiend wiill not 2hut up about your boyfriiend'2 brother'2 god damn eye2.  
CG: JUST A MOMENT.  
CG: OK, I RAN THAT BY STRIDER, AND HE WENT, I QUOTE, 'EWWWWWW.'  
TA: ii know!  
TA: he ju2t went off two theater club rhap2odiiziing about amber.  
TA: however, he object2 two the hat, 2hade2, haiir2tyle, collar, and glove2, 2o ii'm not two freaked out.  
CG: STRIDER SAYS 'THERE'S ONE MORE, BUT HE WASN'T CARRYING LI'L CAL FOR ONCE, SO AMPORA CAN BE FORGIVEN FOR NOT OBJECTING TO IT.'  
TA: the fuck ii2 liil cal?  
CG:...OH FFS, STRIDER, TYPE FOR YOURSELF, YOUR PHONE'S RIGHT THERE.   
- turntechGodhead (TG) began pestering carcinoGeneticist (CG)! -  
- turntechGodhead (TG) began pestering twinArmageddons (TA)! -  
TG: ok so  
TG: first off uh i guess thanks for some stuff  
TG: yes im always this articulate  
CG: IT'S TRUE.  
TG: i had no idea bro and roxy would actually seriously show up in person  
TG: nor that roxy would get her distressing mack on with my roommate ugh ugh ugh  
TG: but at least bro didnt bring lil cal  
TG: that thing is an unholy abomination from eldritch realms beyond spacetime  
CG: IT'S SOME KIND OF STUFFED DOLL PUPPET THING. APPARENTLY STRIDER THE ELDER HAS A THING. FOR PUPPETS.   
TA: 2hiit, 2triider, your famiily ii2 iimpre22iively weiird.  
TG: yup  
TG: sure did put your finger right on the nub of my gist with that observation there all right captor  
CG: WHILE WE HAVE YOU ON THE LINE. IS THE ROXY INDIVIDUAL STILL IN STRIDER'S ROOM OR HAS SHE GONE OFF TO GIGGLE ELSEWHERE?  
TA: ii dunno. waiit, let me ju2t go down the hall and have a look.  
CG: MAKE IT SNAPPY.  
TA: ...ok, iit'2 dead 2iilent and the liight'2 off. ii thiink the coa2t ii2 clear.  
TG: no hot pink thigh highs hanging from the doorknob  
TA: nope, not a one. al2o the whiiteboard diidn't 2ay '2exiiliing iin progre22, plea2e come back later.'  
TG: didnt need the extra detail captor  
TG: ok gonna go grab some of my shit out of there and then go hide in the woods like a well adjusted mature young adult  
TA: kk'2 told you about the hiippiie hut, riight?  
TG: captor the way you type is kind of hypnotically awful  
TG: hiippiie  
TG: wow that sucks  
CG: YES, OF COURSE I TOLD HIM ABOUT IT, AND YES, THAT IS WHERE WE ARE HEADED.   
TG: i need to recover from the shock of unexpected relatives  
TG: im delicate you know  
CG: BULLSHIT. YOU'RE JUST LAZY AS FUCK AND YOU PREFER LYING AROUND DOING NOTHING TO STRENUOUS PHYSICAL ACTIVITY OF ANY TYPE.  
CG: WHICH IS HANDY, BECAUSE I FEEL THE SAME WAY.   
TA: ok, ii'll leave you two it, lovebiird2.  
CG: YEAH, YEAH, FUCK YOU TOO, CAPTOR. LET'S MEET FOR DINNER.  
TA: 2ound2 good. later2.

- twinArmageddons (TA) ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist (CG)! -  
- twinArmageddons (TA) ceased pestering turntechGodhead (TG)! -

~

You are underneath Lightboard M with a screwdriver and a cylinder of canned air when a familiar pair of purple eyes meet yours through a gap in the wires. "How fares Gresley?" asks Rose Lalonde. 

Managing not to bonk your head on the underside of the equipment, you sit up, and sneeze violently as the movement shifts the soft fur of dust you've built up over the past half an hour.

"Bless you," she says, as you explode again, and hands you a tissue. 

"Sorry." You get yourself under control. "Um. Well. Eridan is in love with Dirk Strider's improbable eyes, although he'd like to give him a makeover in every other aspect; Roxy scares the shit out of me; Dave and Karkat crept off to hide in the woods and probably have sloppy makeouts. I haven't seen English since this morning."

"How are _you?_ she asks, gently. You shrug. 

"Weirded out, but as long as everyone's not, like, in full-on drama mode I can deal."

"I'd invite you to come over for dinner, but it's likely to be a Strilonde-fest," Rose says. You nod. 

"It's okay, I'm gonna go get dinner with KK and Strider...Dave, I mean. I can't think of him as anything other than Strider. They're adorable, by the way."

"Of course they are. God, I'm glad that chapter in our lives is closed," she says, acidly. "--I actually did come up here for a reason. Kanaya and I are putting on _Hamlet_ in the fall for half our final project, and we want to ask you to be our stage manager."

You blink. "Stage manager? I run lights, Rose, I'm a board op, I don't even know what a stage manager _does_."

"Tells everyone what to do and when to do it. It's going to be a simple production--as simple as we can get it, anyway--and you're not only good with running the board, you can troubleshoot and you're brilliant with programming. Kanaya's doing the lighting design, but she could really use the help of a good light tech. And frankly, I want to know that someone I trust not to fuck up is on the headset while my grade is at stake."

You go on blinking. Stage manager? Seriously? It would be...

It would be fucking awesome is what it would be. To get to organize all this shit and make sure the cues are on time and the sound is synced up and all the props and prompts are just so--and to get to work with these people whom you've grown to love. "I'll think about it?" you tell her, but you think by the look on her face she already knows you'll say yes. 

"By all means. I should go and see what my delightful siblings have got up to in my absence, and relieve Kanaya. Be of good cheer, Sollux, they won't stay very long."

You almost want to stop her and say, no, that isn't what I want, I just...don't know how to deal with people so deliberately and perfectly odd; but she's gone before you can make the sentence work right, and you just shrug and settle back to your work. 

 

- golgothasTerror (GT) began pestering twinArmageddons (TA)! -

GT: Captor i hate to bother you out of the blue like this!!   
GT: But i'm very much afraid i'm in need of a favour.   
GT: Gosh this is embarrassing!!   
TA: 2piit iit out, englii2h. what'2 goiing on?   
GT: Well it's just that...ah, Ms. Lalonde finds herself a trifle on the inebriated side! And frankly i don't feel it advisable for her to operate a motorcar just at the moment and i may perhaps have had a little too much myself...   
TA: oh my fuckiing god. how old even are you, englii2h?   
GT: I'll be twenty in december!   
TA: ii don't even want two know how the fuck you got iinto whatever bar you're at. what bar are you at.   
GT: Actually we aren't at a licensed establishment at all!    
TA: where. are. you.   
GT: That's the problem, dash it! I'm not entirely sure. Ms. Lalonde doesn't seem to remember...   
TA: ii am goiing two murder you, englii2h. okay. here'2 what you're goiing two do. doe2 your phone have gp2?   
GT: What's a gp2??   
TA: global po2iitiioniing 2y2tem, you a22.   
GT: Ah! Of course i should have suspected. Let me investigate...   
GT: Gosh this is like a spy movie!! ok i have coordinates for our location.   
TA: giive me them. and then ii wiill borrow eriidan'2 car and driive out there two re2cue you. and then ii wiill 2mack you up2iide the head for beiing dumb enough two go out alone wiith a woman you hardly know who ii2 way older than you and doe2n't 2eem two be the mo2t re2pon2iible per2on iin the uniiver2e judgiing by her 2tance on underage driinkiing.    
GT: You're an absolute brick captor. A proper brick. I can't thank you enough!!!   
TA: ii know. 2iit tiight, ii'm on my way.


End file.
